


Werewolves!!! on Ice

by rainproof



Category: Teen Wolf (TV), Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Crossover, Gen, Humor, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Monster of the Week, Teen Wolf canon-typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 09:46:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14892279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainproof/pseuds/rainproof
Summary: “That’s your 'aha!' face,” Stiles declared, jabbing a finger at his father.  “It’s your Clouseau face, your Poirot face, your--”Noah turned the paper around and tapped the headline.  “This Victor Nikiforov guy is definitely crashing at the Red Roof Inn on Maple Street,” he said, smirking.Allison sat up so quickly that her ipad mini went flying.  “Victor Nikiforov?!” she gasped, eyes going round and huge.  “TheVictor Nikiforov?  What’s he doing in Beacon Hills?”





	Werewolves!!! on Ice

**Author's Note:**

> ....and thus my proud tradition of sporadically posting only the weirdest crossover/fusion fic continues. This, like many ridiculous things in my life, is entirely the fault of [louciferish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/louciferish/pseuds/louciferish).

They were six hours north of San Francisco when the low awning of matte-gray clouds overhead burst and the snow began to fall in earnest. At first the flakes were soft, evaporating instantly as they struck the windshield of the pink rental convertible, but within half an hour the snow was rushing by in eddies of white that blocked out the view of towering trees and deep old-growth forest. The low clouds and thick swirls created a strange half-dark twilight outside, and soon it was hard to see anything past the first row of massive pines.

The flurries made Yuuri grateful that Victor was driving - he looked as calm and content as ever, humming along with Yuri’s ‘Epic Roadtrip’ Spotify playlist as the snow whirled past their windows. Yuri himself was snoring away in the backseat, his hoodie pulled down over his eyes. Yuuri had always thought of himself as an easy sleeper - but he had nothing on the teenager in the back seat. Yurio could truly sleep anywhere.

Victor was always so at home in the snow - it made Yuuri think of the spring they’d met, and of late spring snow scattered atop delicate cherry blossoms.

“You’re smiling,” Victor observed, eyes flashing over briefly as he guided the car along a rare straightaway. His hair was getting long, Yuuri noticed. Soon it would be long enough to pull back in a ponytail again.

“Just thinking about how lucky I am to have my own personal chauffeur,” Yuuri said, teasing. 

“We really should get you your license,” Victor said with a laugh. They’d had several conversations about the possibility. Yuuri couldn’t see the point in acquiring a license anywhere, given how much they traveled, but Victor thought it would be fun if they could both drive. “Although, maybe not. I’d have to share the wheel.

Yuuri grinned. “And we all know how well you share.”

Victor’s lips pursed in a faux pout. “I share perfectly well...”

“Then why is it I never get a bite of dessert when we order one to share?”

“.... when I want to!” Victor finished, pointedly. “I share well when I want to, and you are on a diet, Yuuri-dearest.” 

“It’s officially the off-season,” Yuuri pointed out, gleefully. “I’ve earned at least three katsudon this year.”

Victor laughed, dropping his left hand to the wheel and stretching his right one out to give Yuuri’s leg a squeeze. “You have,” he agreed. “But I recommend you wait until we get back to Japan. You know California won’t make it like your mother does.”

A gust of wind rattled the convertible’s windows, and Yuuri reached down to the wheel well, pulling up his jacket and spreading it across his lap like a blanket. The edge brushed Victor’s fingertips and he frowned. 

“Are you cold?” he asked. He removed his hand from Yuuri’s knee to fiddle with the air conditioning dial on the dashboard, glancing from the dial up to the snowy road and back again.

Yuuri swatted his hand away. “A bit. Here, let me do that. You’re driving.”

“It’s fine, I can--”

“No, really--”

As Yuuri bent down to adjust the dial, a blur of dark movement cut through the snowy swirls mere feet in front of the car. Victor swore in Russian and jerked the wheel reflexively, slamming on the brakes. The combination had the unfortunate effect of sending the car into a spin. Yuuri was thrown forward into the hard line of his seatbelt, his heart hammering in his chest. He heard a rough tumbling squawk behind him as Yurio was thrown awake, and realized he hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt.

He had no idea how many times the car spun on the dark road. On the ice Yuuri could sense every centimeter of every rotation - he could have emerged from this death-spiral with grace and poise. None of that helped him now, strapped to half a ton of steel on a dark road in the middle of nowhere. 

He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting in terror for the inevitable, shattering crunch of the car striking one of the towering trees that lined the road.

Waited, and waited, and… 

Their momentum eased and then stopped all together. When he opened his eyes again they locked onto Victor’s hands, his knuckles white and taut against the steering wheel. His entire body was heaving, visibly deflating with each exhalation. 

“Victor?” Yuuri said, weakly. Victor’s wild eyes snapped to him, terror in his expression. When he spoke the first few words came out Russian and panicked.

“I’m fine,” Yuuri said. He didn’t need to speak Russian well to know what Victor was asking - but he was more worried about Yuri, who he’d clearly heard slamming about in the back seat of the car. His own seatbelt was painfully tight against his chest, so he unfastened the buckle before squirming around in his seat. “Yuri? Yuri, are you--”

The blonde boy definitely had the worst of it. He was half on the floor of the car, his right shoulder jammed in the beneath the passenger seat. Yuuri tried to offer him a hand, then realized the nature of the problem. He shoved his hand between the door and his seat, sliding it forward as far as it would go and giving Yuuri enough space to maneuver. Yuuri slid further into the footwell, but found enough leverage to heave himself up onto the seat again. 

As soon as he was up he was shouting, clutching at his shoulder and screaming at Victor in Russian. Victor shouted back, adrenaline making his voice tremble as he slammed a hand into the wheel to emphasize whatever point he was making.

Yuuri reached out, snagging Victor’s hand from the air as it gesticulated wildly. “English, Victor,” he requested gently. “Are you okay?”

Victor visibly collected himself, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed convulsively. “I’m so sorry, Yuuri, Yurio -”

“What the fuck was that!” Yuri snarled, clutching at his right shoulder with his left hand. Yuuri felt a pang of concern, hoping desperately that he hadn’t wrenched anything vital before their final ice show of the off-season. Forget Yakov’s fury - Victor would never forgive himself if he had a hand in hurting Yuri, even if it was a complete accident.

“I don’t know! It was something - tall, and kind of ...blue-ish? It leapt out of nowhere, and I couldn’t--”

“You did,” Yuuri said again, squeezing his hand hard, then raising it up to his cheek and pressing into it. The touch would comfort them both. “You were brilliant, you stayed so calm. And everyone’s okay, so--.” 

“Speak for yourself,” Yuri spat.

Victor rounded on him, angrier than Yuuri had seen him in a long time. “What the hell were you thinking, not wearing a seatbelt?”

“I was napping!” Yuri snapped, all teenage temper and unapologetic petulance.

“You know better than to - “

“I thought you knew how to drive! Obviously I know better, now!”

“STOP!” Yuuri demanded, voice echoing in the cab of the convertible. “Both of you, stop! We’re in the middle of the road on a dark highway - can we have this conversation after we pull over?”

Victor’s bit his lip, obviously feeling guilty all over again. He clenched and unclenched his hands, then exhaled slowly and shifted the car back into drive and carefully pulled it over onto the shoulder. Once the vehicle had come to a complete stop, Victor put it in park, punched the hazard lights, and dropped his head to the steering wheel in shuddering silence.

Yuuri unclenched his own fists and swallowed tightly.

The sight of Victor so obviously distressed appeared to have a calming effect on Yuri. He folded his arms across his chest and looked out the window. “Where are we, anyway?” 

“I’m not sure,” Yuuri admitted. In fact, he wasn’t sure which way they’d come from or which way they were going. He glanced around the front seat for his phone but came up empty-handed. “My phone went flying - can you check yours?”

Yuri scowled. “It’s dead.”

“What?”

“It died while I was editing redwood photos,” Yuri muttered. “My charger cord is in the trunk.”

“Okay,” Yuuri said, exhaling slowly. He could feel panic rising in the back of his mind and ruthlessly crushed it back. Victor was already freaking out, so he would have to be the calm one. 

His eyes lingered on the shudders wracking Victor’s back, but he honestly wasn’t sure if a comforting hand would be welcome. Victor had never been very good at making mistakes; he might just need a moment to catch his breath. Yuuri shrugged on his coat, patting the pockets for any sign of his phone, then cracked the car door and stepped out into the cold.

Despite the heavy snowfall, there wasn’t much snow dusting the asphalt yet. It was enough to crunch under his sneakers, but not enough to dampen the canvas of his Converse. He zipped up his jacket and leaned back into the warm wheel well. Sure enough, when he pushed his seat back into its original position, his phone rattled loose from where it had been trapped between the seat and the center console. 

The screen was cracked, but the phone was otherwise functional. Yuuri sighed, but couldn’t bring himself to feel irritated. He knew the casualty count of that little spin could have been a whole lot higher.

He tapped the screen to life and squinted at the bars before lifting it up over his head. He waggled the device one way and then another, but no bars magically appeared. The little blue dot that was their vehicle continued to hover motionless, wedged between dark green swaths of nature preserve. “We’re really in the middle of nowhere,” he muttered, stuffing both the phone and his hands into his pockets.

To make matters even more confusing, Victor had spun the car in an intersection. Yuri hadn’t seen the fork in the road coming; nevertheless, they were currently pulled over on the edge of a y-junction, equally dark and snowless spans of asphalt stretching off in three directions. Yuuri walked for a few meters up one leg of the Y and then and then back again, looking for tire treads or skid marks - he even checked the snowy grass on either side for deer prints. 

There were no prints of any kind, but there was a splattering of something dark and viscous across the white snow. At first Yuuri assumed it was blood, but the headlights shining off the splatters showed that it was more purple than red.

Stranger still, it was steaming in the night air.

There was a faint creak and the quick report of a branch snapping from just behind him. Yuuri whirled and frowned, squinting into shadowy twilight beneath the trees that lined the road. Yuuri stepped closer, hoping he wouldn’t find himself staring at maimed animal. There was no way they were fitting an injured deer into their rental convertible.

Something growled, a wheezing growl that was _not_ a deer-sound. Yuuri jumped and backed up frantically until he was back in the glow cast by the headlights, then quickly moved around to the side of the car.

“Guys?” he said weakly. “I think we should go.”

Yuri was digging his charger cable out of the trunk. “Huh? Why? Did you find the deer?” 

“I don’t think it was a deer,” Yuuri said, swallowing tightly. He grabbed his snack bag from the trunk and ducked into the front seat. Once inside he struggled to shrug off his coat and trying his best to keep the dusty snow on its shoulders off his jeans.

Once they were all safely inside the vehicle, Yuuri dared to look back out the window into the darkness. Nothing looked back. _’It was just your imagination,_ he decided.

“What’s the verdict, Yuuri?”

“Well,” he said, ripping open a chocolate bar and breaking off a piece. “The good news is that you missed the… whatever it was. The bad news is that I have no idea which way we were heading.”

Victor straightened at the sound of his voice, eyes damp. Yuuri offered him the chocolate silently and Victor took it, biting off a corner and chewing slowly. 

Yuri thrust a hand between the two front seats, silently demanding his share - so Yuuri broke the bar in half and gave Yuri the bigger piece.

“What do you mean, ‘you have no idea where we were heading’?” Victor asked at last. Yuuri was a bit embarrassed by how comforting he found the strength returning to Victor’s voice. 

“I mean,” he said, waving a hand at the rapidly-whitening snowscape. “Whatever it was jumped out at an intersection, and we spun around like a board game spinner. We don’t have any signal, and I have no idea which way we were coming from. Did you see a sign for a junction? There must have been something.”

Victor flushed, abruptly mashing his nose against the window and squinting out into the darkness. His breath left a puff of white on the glass. “Iiiii,” he said, letting the word linger as he considered the view. “I don’t have a clue. I don’t think there was a sign - did you see a sign?”

“I didn’t see anything” Yuri muttered in the back. “I was asleep.”

Yuuri ignored him. “What should we do?”

Victor bit his lip, then turned the key in the ignition decisively. The car rumbled back to life and the vents began to blow warm once again.

“We keep moving forward,” he said, determined. “We don’t have to be in LA for a week - there’s bound to be civilization on any one of these roads.”

•○•

An hour later everyone’s determination was flagging; the rush of adrenaline had worn off, leaving them more exhausted than before. Victor’s playlist had been temporarily banned after they’d cycled through it’s contents for a third time, and Yuri’s playlist was full of crashing rock that gave Yuuri a headache. His own phone was filled primarily with tracks he was considering for future programs - and neither of his companions were keen to listen to him mutter indecisively about the scores.

So they drove in silence.

“You know, this really isn’t how I imagined California,” Yuri muttered, staring out the window. 

“It does seem unseasonable,” Yuuri agreed, then forced some cheer into his voice. “But at least it’s beautiful.” He thought for a moment. “it’s not really that surprising. Japan is as long as California, and we have a huge seasonal variation. Hokkaido gets over a meter of snow every year.”

“Well, I’ve never heard of blizzards in California,” Yuri declared imperiously. “Also, I have to pee. How have we not passed a single gas station in two whole hours?”

“I always say it’s not a real roadtrip until someone pees in the woods,” Victor said cheerfully. The uneventful drive was obviously restoring his confidence - though he was definitely driving slower than he had been before their near-miss.

“You never say that,”Yuri groused, shifting uncomfortably in the back seat. “And I’m not peeing in the woods.”

“Why not? It’s natural! Bears pee in the woods. Deer pee in the woods.”

Yuri made a disgusted noise. “I’m not gonna pee somewhere any passing car can see me!”

“We haven’t passed a car in hours,” Yuuri observed, innocently.

Thirty minutes later found them pulled over with the hazards on for the second time that night, Yuri stomping into the line of trees and shouting for them to look away. 

Yuuri took the opportunity to step out again, stretching his legs as he moved his phone in high circles and praying for signal. Victor leaned against the trunk of the car and gazed thoughtfully down the long stretch of road ahead of them.

It was on Yuuri’s second rotation that he noticed the lights. At first he thought the glimmer in the distance was just the after-image of his bright phone screen burned onto his retinas... but no - no, they were definitely lights, and they were definitely getting closer.

“Car!” he shouted, dashing back over to Victor. “Car, car!”

“WHAT!” Yuri shrieked from the darkness off to their right. Yuuri smothered a laugh in his palm as the shocked exclamation was followed by a crash and a swear.

“Let’s flag them down and ask where we are!” Victor exclaimed, clapping his hands together hopefully.

Yuuri hesitated. If they’d been in Japan he absolutely would have agreed - but this was the United States, and he’d seen one too many horror movie trailers that involved innocent hitchhiking teens and crazed, evil murderers. 

For that matter, he’d seen an awful lot of horror movies that began with a car breaking down on the side of the road--

He pushed the thought away and edged closer to Victor. The taller man happily threw an arm around his shoulder, drawing him in and giving his arm a squeeze. “They probably won’t stop,” Yuuri said. He wasn’t sure he even wanted them to. As long as they had gas in the tank, they could just keep driving until they found signs of life. 

The lights drew closer, closer - and then began to twinkled red and blue.

Yuuri let out the long breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding as the car slowed to a crawl, then stopped altogether. His eyes raked over the bright white ‘BEACON COUNTY SHERIFF’ emblazoned across the doors - but the name didn’t ring any bells. The window rolled down and a man - presumably the sheriff - leaned out, his face a pale oval in the dark, snowy night.

“You boys alright?” the man asked. “Need any help?”

“Actually,” Victor said, turning his ten-megawatt smile on full-blast. “We’re a teenie, tiny bit lost. Can you tell us where we are?”

“Beacon County,” said the man. “No GPS?”

“No signal,” Yuuri said, holding up his dark phone. 

“Got a map?”

They exchanged embarrassed glances just as Yuri came crashing up out of the woods, jacket covered in snow - he definitely had fallen over, Yuuri thought, smugly.

“Don’t arrest me!” Yuri exclaimed, eyes wide and round with panic. “They told me it was okay! They made me do it!”

The sheriff’s eyebrows spiked upwards. “Do what, son?”

“Pee! In the woods!”

Victor burst out laughing - then froze. “That’s not - wait, that’s not actually illegal is it?”

“Was it an emergency?” the sheriff asked, expression perfectly unreadable.

“YES!” Yuri cried, throwing his hands in the air.

“Hmmmmm - well then, I’ll guess I’ll let is slide...” the man mused, his eyes twinkling. “Just this once. Now, you boys hang tight, I think I’ve got a spare map in the glove box. Give me two shakes.”

The sheriff rolled up the window and performed a neat three-point turn, lining the cruiser up behind their rental car. Yuuri was certain he’d never felt so relieved to see a cop car in the rear view mirror.

The man rifled around in his glove compartment and then clambered out of the vehicle, holding a spiral-bound road atlas in one hand. His uniform was brown, his smile was easy, and his nametag read ‘STILINSKI’ in all capitals. His hair was salt-and-peppery beneath the dusting of snow that was already collecting at his temples.

“You three aren’t from around here, huh?” he said, grinning at Yurio’s frantic expression.

“Is it that obvious?” Victor asked, feigning shock. 

“Accent aside, Californians don’t drive in the snow,” Stilinski said, grinning. He dusted the hood of the car clear of snow and leaned the atlas against it, then uncapped his pen with his teeth an circled a spot on the map. “This is out of date, but the great state of California’s fresh out of cash, so the roads haven’t changed much since then. You’re about - hereish,” he said, tapping a spot on the map. 

Yuuri groaned, tracing the road back to a familiar-looking Y-intersection. The other leg of the Y struck out in the direction of San Francisco - but they’d taken the eastern fork and headed straight towards the mountains. “Oh, no.”

“Where are you trying to get to?” Stilinski asked.

“San Francisco,” the three said in unison. The Sheriff threw back his head and laughed. 

“Well,” he said, shaking his head. “You got one thing right - you are very, very lost.” 

Victor groaned and flopped against the car, heedless of the snow.

“Well,” Yuuri said, making an executive decision on behalf of their little trio. He was tired of sitting, Yuri was sliding into an epic sulk, and Victor was looking thoroughly chagrined at their navigational error. “We’re definitely not making it to the city tonight. Is there a town nearby where we could rent a room? Maybe we’ll have better luck reading street signs in the daylight.”

“Finally,” Yurio muttered - as though he hadn’t been the one demanding they push through the countryside and hit San Francisco as soon as possible.

“You’re only about twenty minutes outside of Beacon Hills,” the sheriff said, nodding as he spoke. “There are a few hotels downtown, and a Best Western on the far side of town. They have no idea where this weather came from, but the local weather guy seems to think it’s only going to get worse from here.”

“Definitely time for a break,” Yuuri agreed.

 

“I’m almost at the county line,” the Sheriff said, thoughtfully. His eyes slid sideways and a grin appeared on his face. “If you promise to stay out of trouble, we can see about arranging you a police escort into town. Sound good?”

“It sounds perfect!” Victor exclaimed, his frustration evaporating instantly as his eyes went bright and joyous. Yuri envied, as always, Victor’s ability to shrug off adversity and throw himself into whatever new experience lay before him. “Lead the way!”

•○•

Sheriff Noah Stilinski stepped into the house with a happy sigh, shucking off his damp jacket and hanging his keys on the peg by the door. His shoulders were tense and his eyes were dry after a long day filled with endless hours of driving in the snow - but simply being at home was enough to take the edge off. A man’s home was his castle, after all, and he had sixteen straight hours to reign over his realm, kick off his shoes, crack open a beer, and --

He turned the corner into the living room and froze in place, heart immediately plummeting into his stomach. The entire first floor of his home looked as though a Victorian library had vomited all over it. There were stacks of leather-bound books, crumbling scrolls, haphazardly stacked piles of papers, and five different laptops and tablets scattered across every available surface. Herbs, crystals, hell, there was even a magic wand laying on the coffee table.

This sort of mess could only mean one thing.

“Please tell me there’s coffee,” he grunted, feeling a tension headache beginning at the base of his skull. “If we’ve got witches again, I’m gonna need more coffee.”

God, witches were the headlice of the magical world - this made three times in six months. They were just _impossible_ to get rid of.

“It’s not witches,” Boyd told him, coming into the living room from the kitchen and clutching two mugs of coffee, one of which he thrust in the Noah’s general direction. 

Stilinski _liked_ Boyd. 

“Well,” the teenager amended. “It’s _probably_ not witches.”

Allison Argent looked up from her place next to Scott, sandwiched between his hip and the arm of the sofa. While the others were clearly immersed in their research, she was playing Candy Crush on her iPad mini, seemingly unconcerned. “They think the weather is magically-induced,” she told the Sheriff, apologetically.

Noah paused with his mug half-raised to his lips. “ _What_?”

 

“We don’t _think_ the weather is a magical storm - it’s just a hypothesis,” Lydia corrected. “The nature of a hypothesis requires that it be proven - so while it may just happen to be an absurdly, unseasonably-late blizzard, it also might happen to be witches.”

“And let’s be real,” Scott added. “This is Beacon Hills. Nothing’s ever just a normal, everyday snowstorm.”

“It’s not even a very heavy snow,” Allison muttered. She - unlike everyone else in the room - had spent plenty of time living outside of California. “You realize people in Ohio would laugh at you if they saw you this panicked over a half-inch of snow?”

“People in Ohio have probably never had a witch infestation,” Stiles complained, coming down the stairs. Noah relaxed further at the sight of his son, relieved that the kid was present and accounted for. He did an automatic scan for any new bruises, cuts, or scrapes, and was mollified to find him more or less in one piece. In his general experience, Stiles was always more trouble when he was out of sight than when he was safely in hand.

Then he spotted Derek Hale trailing after Stiles like a tall, dark, and broody raincloud and the tension headache came _right_ back.

“Hey kiddo,” Noah said, wrapping an arm around Stiles’ shoulder as he stepped off the staircase. He also took that opportunity to give Derek a suspicious once-over where he lingered on the stairs, clearly uncomfortable. He still wasn’t sure what prompted Derek - twenty-three years old and independently wealthy - to hang out with a bunch of teenagers.

A little voice in the back of his mind whispered uncomfortable truths, like ‘arrested development’, ‘traumatic childhood’ and ‘incapable of socializing with peers his own age’ - but he ignored those little whispers. After all, the Hale kid was apparently a werewolf. What could Noah possibly guess about his motivations?

“Sometimes the early Spring snows are just early Spring snows,” Stilinski told the teens, even though he didn’t really believe it. He sidestepped the debris on the floor and flopped down on the couch on the other side of Scott. He looked around for a moment, then spotted the corner of the sports page just barely visible beneath a pile of of historic meteorological reports.

Flipping the page up he glanced over the headlines and froze, blinking down at the faces staring back up at him. 

Featured on the front page of the sports section was a very familiar-looking face. Tall, lean and pale with ice-blonde hair. The skintight, bedazzled jumpsuit wasn’t quite so familiar, but the face definitely was.

“Huh,” he said.

“I know that face,” Stiles said accusingly from where he’d settled cross-legged by the coffee table. Derek had settled just behind him, leaning back against the TV cabinet with his hands on his knees. 

_‘God, they are not subtle at all,’_ Noah thought, wryly.

“That’s your 'aha!' face,” Stiles declared, jabbing a finger at his father. “It’s your Clouseau face, your Poirot face, your--”

Noah turned the paper around and tapped the headline. “This Victor Nikiforov guy is definitely crashing at the Red Roof Inn on Maple Street,” he said, smirking.

Allison sat up so quickly that her ipad mini went flying. “Victor Nikiforov?!” she gasped, eyes going round and huge. “ _The_ Victor Nikiforov? What’s he doing in Beacon Hills?”

“Who the hell is Victor Nikiforov?” Scott asked, mood darkening in direct correlation to Allison’s excitement. 

“The world-record holding figure skater? Olympic gold medalist?” Lydia asked, eyebrows rising as Scott’s face showed no signs of recognition.

“Won five consecutive World Championships and five straight Grand Prix Finals, world-renowned choreographer and coach?” Boyd added, staring at Scott with an expression of utter disbelief on his face.

Stiles spluttered. “Oh my god, Boyd, are you a closeted figure skating fan?!”

“Closeted?” Boyd asked, eyebrows spiking upwards. “I work at an ice rink.”

Noah watched his son’s mouth hinge open and rolled his eyes. “You’re catching flies,” he told the kid, who snapped his mouth shut with a grimace.

“I bet that means Katsuki is here too,” Boyd said, glancing over at Lydia with an uncharacteristically eager look on his face. “They’re peas in a pod, apparently.”

“Do you work this week?” Lydia asked, grinning at him.

“Sure do,” Boyd smirked. It was spring break, and the kid had the work ethic of a draft horse - Noah had no doubt he was working as much as was humanly - werewolfly? - possible during his week off from school.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Scott raised a hand, snatching the paper out of Noah’s hand. “I don’t care if this guy is some famous ice dancer--”

“Skater,” Boyd, Lydia and Allison all said in unison.

“Skater, whatever! Don’t you think it’s a little weird that the moment this super-pale Russian dude shows up in town, Beacon Hills is suddenly the eye of a category four winter storm?”

“Scott, it’s seriously like half an inch of snow,” Allison groaned.

“I’m just saying, maybe it’s not witches! There have got to be other supernatural creatures that thrive off of frigid, frozen wastelands!”

“I bet Russian folklore has a ton of ice demons,” Stiles said slowly, reaching for a thick gold-embossed volume stacked on the speaker next to the TV. The look on his face meant, quite clearly, that he was about to lose himself in a caffeine-fueled research spiral.

“He seemed like a nice young man,” the Sheriff said, holding up one hand placatingly, while the other deftly retrieved his sports page from Scott’s frantic grasp. “Please don’t stalk him and run him out of town.”

A beat of silence filled the room, and Noah dropped his face into his palm and shook his head. 

This was bound to end poorly.

•○•

Overnight, the half-inch of snow dusting the homes and gardens of Beacon Hills transformed into a thirteen inches of thick, record-setting white snow. It was quickly dubbed Snowmageddon by locals, and the entire town wasted no time in grinding to a complete stand-still.

Cars were snowed in, roads went uncleared, and the local government shut itself down entirely. Had it not been Spring Break, school would have undoubtedly been cancelled.

‘It figures,’ Boyd thought, bundled up in three layers of coats and stomping his way through uncleared sidewalks towards work. ‘ _It just_ figures _that we finally get a real snow day and it falls on Spring Break._ ’

Truth be told, Boyd had no idea if the ice rink would even be open for business today. It was hard to imagine anyone would be inside skating on artificial ice when the outside world had transformed into a literal winter wonderland... but his calls up the managerial chain had gone unanswered, and he couldn’t risk losing his job over a snowy no-show. So there he was, crunching through the snow in his wellington boots at seven in the morning, grateful that his werewolf metabolism ran warm enough that he was comfortable moving around town despite the 25 degree weather. 

The world was hushed and quiet all around him, the silence broken by the occasional crack of a tree branch snapping beneath the weight of ice and snow. Honestly, it was more peaceful than he’d ever seen Beacon Hills.

That usually never lasted - in fact, it usually meant trouble.

Boyd, like any figure skating fan, knew Yuuri Katsuki’s tendency to show up unannounced at local rinks, regardless of the time of day. If their visiting skaters were as snowed-in as the rest of town, he figured his odds of spotting them at the skating rink were as good as they would be anywhere else. Better, probably.

Besides, he didn’t care if Nikiforov was an evil Russian ice demon - he was not going to miss the chance to see the guy skate in person. 

The parking lot to the skating rink was deserted, and Boyd had to shovel snow away from the sliding glass doors with his hands before he could put his key to good use and slip one open wide enough to slide inside. Once he’d peeled off his outer layers and thrown them across the front row bleacher to dry, he set about his regular routine of prepping the ice rink for business. He’d been working there in some capacity since he was fourteen, and by now he could go through the motions in his sleep.

First and foremost, he punched his employee number into the terminal by the lockers to sign himself in. He didn’t bother with the lights - not only did the harsh overhead fluorescents hurt his sensitive eyes, his werewolf vision rendered them unnecessary. Then he strapped on a pair of skates and did a lap, frowning down at the surface of the rink as the blades of his skates sliced their way across the ice. The closers were supposed to run the zamboni before leaving, but the dips and notches in the surface suggested that - once again - they’d been lazy about it.

 _‘Probably eager to get home before the snow got worse.’_ he thought, sighing.

That meant zamboni first, then checking the bathrooms, restocking the toilet paper and paper towels, mopping the skate rental area, then -- if no one else showed up -- prepping the concession stand. On a normal day the concessions opener was supposed to fish out the nozzles for the soda machine, warm up the coffee maker, and set the popcorn to popping. No point in prepping the food area if the rink was going to be closed for the day. 

He unplugged and powered up the zamboni, added water to the tank, and maneuvered it out onto the surface of the ice. The machine was enormous but worked on a very simple principle - it shaved off the top surface of the ice and collected the shavings, while the back half returned water to the rink and spread it widely and thinly, allowing it to refreeze in a smooth stretch before skaters returned to the ice.

It only took about fifteen minutes to cover the entire surface of the rink. On his last pass, he looked up and spotted a shadowy figure at the front door, knee-deep in snow and peering in hopefully. Boyd waved at the visitor, and the visitor - clearly identifiable as Yuuri Katsuki, even through the dirty window glass - waved back.

Smirking, Boyd returned the zamboni to it’s storage dock and then strolled out to the lobby. Technically, the rink didn’t open until ten - but he wasn’t going to be the one who turned away a world-class figure skater. If they were lucky he’d stick around until classes started for the day… it’d be the most exciting thing to happen at the rink since Derek had shown up and offered him the bite.

“Uh, hey,” he said as he cracked the door, “Can I help you?”

Yuuri was shorter than Boyd had expected - it was always hard to gauge height out on the ice - but he clearly had the compact, super-athletic build that Boyd associated with gymnasts and dancers. He raised a hand to scratch the back of his neck sheepishly and smiled at Boyd.

Boyd didn’t smile back. He wasn’t really the smiley type, and he was too busy trying to subtly sniff out any ice-demony scents to turn on what little charm he had to offer. Katsuki smelled like snow, ice, sport-strength deodorant and chocolate. There was a hint of cologne hanging about his throat, but not enough to suggest he’d applied it that morning.

“Yeah, I -- I know you probably aren’t open yet, but I’m. Well, I’m --”

“Yuuri Katsuki,” Boyd said gruffly. “I know who you are.”

Yuuri’s smile brightened again, as though he wasn’t used to being recognized. “Really? Hey, that’s - that’s great! My friends and I are heading down to an ice show in LA, but we’ve been snowed in. They’re all crashed out at the hotel. I have - a lot of energy to burn, I guess, and I wondered if I could get in some practice before the rink opens. I can pay!” 

He added that last bit as an afterthought, awkwardly waving his hands in front of his body in a move so clumsy that it reminded Boyd of Stiles. 

Boyd glanced in at the dim skating rink, then back at Yuuri. “Alright,” he said simply, shoving the door further open and letting Yuuri - along with a small avalanche of fresh snow -- enter the building.

“Thank you!” Katsuki beamed. “That’s very kind of you. How much …?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Boyd said gruffly, waving him away. “Locker rooms are that way. I assume you brought your own skates?”

Katsuki nodded sheepishly, shrugging one shoulder. There was a small ‘TEAM JAPAN’ duffle bag - just big enough for a pair of skates and a bottle of water - slung over it.

“Cool. Give it like ten minutes for the re-freeze and try not to hack the ice up too much.”

Boyd left Katsuki to it and completed his checks of the bathroom, locker rooms, and skate rental station. While he was behind the counter checking for receipt paper, he slipped out his thumb and shot a quick text to the pack.

_‘K is at at the rink - no red flags.’_

Boyd was always careful not to send anything blatantly supernatural to the pack, just in case Lydia’s sister or Erica’s parents were snooping. He tapped send and, while he waited for a response, leaned against the door frame to watch Yuuri on the ice.

_‘what does he smell like’_

Subtle, Derek. Very subtle.

 _“Figure skater,’_ he tapped out.

Standing in the entryway to the skate rental area, Boyd watched Yuuri get into his routine in earnest. His warm-up was lengthy and involved a lot of improbable stretching, including more than one ballet-esque vertical split that made Boyd wince in sympathy. Yuri Katsuki was the bendiest human he’d ever seen - it took some serious dedication to reach that level of fitness without supernatural assistance.

_‘I wonder if I could do the splits now that I’ve got the bite.’_

After warming up, Yuuri began a few simple step routines that gradually escalated in difficulty. He would do one long string, then reverse the actions, or swivel his hips and lead with the opposite foot. When he finally paused for a water break Boyd busied himself fiddling with the nozzles at the snack counter so that he wouldn’t be caught staring.

Eventually Yuri took his place at the center of the ice, tapped his ipod, and began to skate through the rough outlines of a routine.

Boyd had seen plenty of practices in the years he’d spent working at the skating rink. Figure skaters, pair skaters, the local hockey team - the rink was never empty, and a Zamboni-driver’s work was never done. Katsuki, though…. Katsuki practiced with an intensity and focus that was well beyond anything Boyd had ever witnessed. Element after element, fall after fall, he practiced the transitions, then ran each combination to his satisfaction. When he grew frustrated with botched landings, he’d take a lap and then try again, an expression of perfect focus on his face as his blades carved across the ice.

“Practice makes permanent,” Boyd muttered, shaking his head. If Yuri was a storm-summoning supernatural creature, it didn’t show in his skating - he worked for every inch, every jump, every win.

Boyd turned away and set about opening the register.

•○•

Noah Stilinski’s sixteen hours of respite ended with his least favorite sound - the duty phone on the nightstand buzzing and shrieking for his attention. He cracked his eyes and groped around for the device, eyes snagging on the alarm clock next to his bed. He was relieved to see that it was almost seven AM - he’d managed a strong eight hours of sleep despite the hordes of teenagers that had set up camp in his living room.

“Stilinski,” he grunted into the phone, sitting up and rubbing at the bridge of his nose. The room was cold enough to strike up goose pimples on his bare arms.

“Hey, boss. Bad news this morning,” came Parrish’s voice, tired and resigned on the other end of the line.

“Good morning to you too, deputy,” Stilinski muttered, standing and scratching at his belly. He already missed the warmth of his covers. 

“Honestly, I wouldn’t use the word good to describe it, sir. We’ve got a 10-54 off Walnut street.”

 _That_ woke Noah up quicker than a triple-shot of espresso. “You’re kidding. Exposure?”

“Doesn't look like it, sir. It’s a bit…. Off.”

Noah closed his eyes as he stood. That tone in Parrish’s voice meant one thing and one thing only - the supernatural was involved, and Noah Stilinski was going to have to fill out a lot of paperwork. 

“I’ll be there in ten.” Christ. Had the kids been right about the weather?

“Haven’t looked outside this morning, have you, sir?”

Noah frowned and moved around the foot of the bed, prying two slats of his venetian blinds apart. “Damn,” he grunted. 

His familiar backyard had vanished beneath a layer of crisp, pristine white snow. His flower beds had vanished entirely, and his grill looked as though it had been caught in an avalanche. Judging by the way their fence-posts disappeared, this was more snow than Beacon Hills had seen in at least thirty years.

“You’re sure it’s not exposure?” he tried again. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant death to wish on a person, but death due to human misadventure was far preferable to death by supernatural hunter.

“Pretty sure, boss.”

“Alright. I’ll be there ASAP - see what you can do to keep it under wraps til I get there.”

The Sheriff stripped off his boxers, fished a fresh pair out from the top drawer of the dresser, and threw on his uniform in three minutes flat. As he made his way down the hall, he thought he detected a hint of movement coming from Stiles’ room.

Great. Unauthorized slumber parties were _exactly_ what he needed right now. Gritting his teeth, Noah threw the door to Stiles’ room open - 

-and was relieved to find his son alone in bed, whatever virtue he still possessed evidently still intact. Christ, kid, it’s cold in here,” he muttered. “Do we need to re-caulk your windows?”

Noah’s eyes tracked to the window and he automatically moved towards it, shoving down on the frame to ensure it was fully closed. The vantage point just _happened_ to give him a clear view of the gently sloping roof that stretched down from Stiles’ window. Much to his relief, that expanse was just as pure and unblemished as the yard beyond.

“Dad? What’s--what’s going on?” Stiles sat up blearily, running his hand through his messy hair and staring blankly at his father.

“I’ve gotta go out on a call, but the cruiser is snowed in. Do you mind loaning me the jeep for a day?”

“Daaaad,” Stiles whined, automatically. “Seriously? You’re taking my car during _spring break?_ ”

Then, what his father had _actually_ said seemed to filter through his brain. Stiles sat up straighter, throwing off the covers and nearly face planting in his haste to reach the window. “Wait, how much did it sno-- WOAH!”

“Enough,” Noah said, snagging his son’s keys off the nightstand. “Thanks, kiddo. Stay out of trouble. I’ll fill her up before I bring her home.”

Even with the jeep’s higher center of gravity and four wheel drive, navigating the mean streets of Beacon Hills was no small feat. The city didn’t own a single snow plow, and the most effective de-icing chemical mixes were illegal in the state of California. Noah would had had to pull over and walk if a few of the guys with the Park Service hadn’t shown up with portable plows strapped to the front of their trucks and cleared both Main street and Vine. He made a mental note to invite them all to the department’s first summer barbecue in thanks.

By the time he reached Parrish and the others, an ambulance had already turned up. His people were loitering, unwilling to move the body before he’d had a chance to check it over, but clearly ready to get inside and warm up their extremities. 

He nodded grimly to Parrish as the deputy fell in step behind him. They walked away from the access road and down a short embankment to where the body lay crumpled, clearly having rolled from the sidewalk at street-level. The once-clean snow had been broken up by dozens of footprints now, thanks to the deputies and crime scene photographer.

“Everything was covered in snow, but we brushed the face and neck clear while trying to determine if resuscitation was an option,” Parrish said, quietly. “And, well. Obviously not.”

Noah circled the corpse and then took an involuntary step back, grimacing. The body had once been a young man wearing thin running clothes - he’d probably been caught in the snow while out on a jog. His skin was crusted with snow and icicles, while little bits of grit and grass clung frozen to his hair and clothes. 

The face, though. The face was frozen - oh god - in rigor mortis, mouth gaping wide in ecstatic smile. The lips were peeled back from the teeth, the brows were scrunched at the center, and the overall effect was _incredibly_ disturbing. The man looked like he had laughed himself to death.

“Well, this is new and terrible,” said Noah Stilinski. He would have almost preferred the witches.

•○•

Stiles waited until he heard the jeep crunching down the driveway before throwing himself out of bed and slamming open his window. He then stepped back, swallowing dryly as Derek lowered himself down from the room, biceps bulging, and shimmied back into the bedroom with only the slightest shower of snowflakes from above.

“Smooth,” Stiles said, trying his best to sound sarcastic.

“I know,” Derek agreed, smirking at him.

“I don’t understand why you don’t just…” Stiles rolled a hand in mid-air. “Roll under the bed, or sneak into the closet. It’s always these death-defying second-story escapes with you.”

“Maybe I like a challenge,” Derek grunted, folding his arms in a way that drew his sleep-rumpled henley tight over his pecs.

“I think you just like showing off,” Stiles muttered, crossing his arms against the chill seeping into the bedroom. Derek noticed the movement and shut the window, looking contrite. 

In fairness, the only reason his dad wasn’t checking the closets or under the bed was that Derek hadn’t gotten caught yet - once that happened, he would claim probable cause and things would get a lot more difficult to hide.

Though honestly, Stiles wasn’t entirely sure what he felt so guilty about. He and Derek certainly had an unorthodox friendship, full of rousing evenings spent hiding bodies and awkwardly platonic-not-platonic sleepovers, but Stiles was eighteen now, damnit. He could have sleepovers with whomever he wanted and it was strictly legal.

Not that anything had ever happened that might not be legal, save in Stiles’ dirtiest fantasies - he was very careful to keep his suffocatingly enormous crush on Derek under wraps whenever the werewolf was close enough to see/scent/smell any incriminating evidence. Admittedly, the slumber parties made that harder than usual.

They made a lot of things harder than --”

Derek cleared his throat. “They found a corpse in the woods.”

“WHAT?” Stiles squeaked, his impending boner dying a quick and painless death.

“That was the call from Parrish - they found a corpse on Walnut.” Derek pulled his jacket from where it had been meticulously hung in Stiles’ closet and shrugged it on. 

“That’s -- “ Stiles squinted, cogs turning slowly in his pre-coffee brain. “That’s not far from the ice rink, or the Red Roof Inn.”

“No. I texted Erica to stake out the Inn - Boyd’s going in to work early in case they turn up at the rink.”

“Scott?”

Derek pulled his best bitchface. “Not answering his phone.”

“Of course,” Stiles muttered. Scotty was a great many things, but reliable in a pinch wasn’t one of them… unless, of course, Allison was involved. “I’ll blow up his phone and see if we can’t get him out of bed.”

“Good,” Derek agreed. “I’m going to the crime scene.”

Stiles eyed him suspiciously. “Really? Your plan, as a former murder suspect, is to lurk around a crime scene under the guise of looking for clues? Come on, dude. It’s like you _want_ to get arrested.”

“I wasn’t charged,” Derek said defensively, as though Stiles needed reminding.

“ _So_ not the point,” he muttered, waving Derek away. “Fine. Whatever. Don’t get seen, and call me when you have info - and for god’s sake, don’t leave footprints behind on my roof..”

“Fine,” Derek said grumpily, heading down the stairs.

•○•

Erica wasn’t particularly thrilled to be staking out the Red Roof Inn on her own. It was an inexpensive hotel, just two long buildings where every room had a door that opened on either the parking lot or a thin first-floor walkway that ringed the structure. There wasn’t even a warm lobby where she could nurse a coffee and pretend to read the daily paper, secret-agent style. No - she was sitting on a damp log, freezing her ass off, clutching a now-empty cup of coffee to her chest as though there were a shred of warmth left in it,.

“Ugh,” she said, shifting her weight to her slightly less-numb left buttcheek.

After Katsuki left for what Boyd confirmed via text to be an early morning practice session, morning at the motel continued on uneventfully. A few people made half-hearted attempts to dig out their cars, while others raided the breakfast-foods vending machine in the lobby for sustenance. Erica tuned out the sea of complaints about the inconvenience - she was a native Californian and was genetically incapable of being anything other than excited about snow.

The door to room 207 didn’t open again until well past ten, when her quarry finally - finally - appeared. 

Erica leaned forward, allowing her supernatural senses to do the hard work. Even from twenty yards away she could make out the figures well enough. Victor would be the taller one - Stiles’ impromptu profile listed his age at 29, while the shorter could only be Yuri Plisetsky, just shy of his seventeenth birthday. 

“Oh, it snowed,” said Victor, moving up to the second-floor balcony railing and leaning out dangerously far over the edge.

“It was snowing when we went to bed, moron,” muttered Yuri. 

“Yes, but this is a proper snow!” Victor beamed, grabbing his companion by the arm. “Come on - let’s go find Yuuri and make snowmen!”

“I don’t want to make snowmen,” Yuri grouched, glaring at the sea of white engulfing the parking lot as though it had personally affronted him. Still, all it took was a tug on his arm and he went along willingly enough.

Erica waited for them to make their way out of the parking lot and off in the direction of the ice rink. Then, very quietly, she followed.

•○•

“Houston,” Stiles announced with entirely too much manic glee, “We have a body.”

“ _Jesus_ , Stiles. You don’t have to sound so excited,” Lydia grumbled, pursing her lips at the mirror. Her hair was rumpled and starting to look a bit oily - she’d need to wash it that night. For now she tucked it all up at the crest of her skull with her spin-pins and reached for her moisturizer.

She wasn’t surprised by the news. She’d had dreams the night before - dreams of terrible mirth, of pained laughter, cramping sides, and sudden silences.

“I’m just saying, we’re totally right.”

“It could still be witches,” she muttered, leaving him on speaker as she dug her favorite down parka out of the closet.

“Erica’s staking out the hotel, Boyd’s got Katsuki at the rink, and Derek is checking out the crime scene. We’ve got this supernatural invasion thing down to a fine art.”

“And you are calling me why….?”

“We have to do _some_ thing,” Stiles said, firmly. “Team Human, all the way.”

“Alright, alright. Come pick me up.”

There was an awkward beat of silence on the other end of the line, making Lydia squint at her phone suspiciously.

“What?”

“See, Dad took the jeep - the cruiser was snowed in.” 

Lydia hung up on him. He rang her back immediately.

“Come on, Lyds--”

“Stilinski, don’t front with me! You only called me because you need a ride!”

“Not true! You know there’s no one I’d rather spend spring break with, Lydia.”

“Derek.”

“Derek doesn’t count!”

“Scott.”

“He’s shacked up with Allison -- her dad was in LA and his flight was cancelled, so they’re playing house at Chez Argent.” Stiles’ voice was absolutely dripping with disdain.

“I don’t do _third place_ ,” Lydia informed him. She hung up on him again and began applying her foundation with a practiced hand. Thirty minutes later, just as she stepped through a cloud of rosewater finishing spray, her phone buzzed with an incoming text.

God, it wasn’t exactly surprising that Stiles knew the length of her morning makeup routine, but it was still a little creepy. She wondered if this was a leftover from the years of unrequited crushing, or if this was a new development now that they were actually friends. Either way, she reached for the phone despite herself and smiled slightly at the message.

_’walked 2 diner. froze. save me.’_

_’You’re buying my coffee.’_ she informed him, then olished her look off with a favorite shade of Dior and reached for her parka.

•○•

Victor beamed, tugging his wool cap off his head and enthusiastically thrusting it down over the round, packed-snowball head of the snowman. “Ahhhh my little Vitya, you are pure as the driven snow! If only we had straw for your lovely locks. Straw, or the finest cornsilk….”

“Bleeeeeh,” Yuri grumbled, rolling his eyes as hard as he could. He gave the face of his snow-tiger another hard scrape, carving out a recessed stripe that he carefully filled with pine needles. “Your snowman’s just as fat as you are.”

“That’s a lie,” Viktor said, smug. “We all know I carry my pork cutlet well. Here, take one of me and my _handsome boy_!” 

Yuri huffed, pulled up Instagram, framed the shot, and snapped the photo. 

Victor scrambled over, thrusting his own phone into Yuri’s hands. “Now mine!” 

After a suitable number of snowmen selfies were captured - Yuri took a particularly satisfying image of himself looking disaffected with his totally sweet snow-tiger in the background. Two filters later it was sitting on his Instastory and he was flipping mindlessly through his notifications.

Otabek was already in LA - god, feet-by-the-pool photos were so overdone. It did look enticingly warm and sunny, though - and here he was, tromping around a city park and freezing his balls off in his spring clothes.

He had several new followers as well; he spent a moment glancing over profiles. Three were obviously ad-based, but one caught his eye - a Beacon Hills local, clad in lots of leopard-print and black leather. When he opened her page to scroll through her photos the top was an image of her all bundled up in a leather jacket with an enormous leopard-print deer stalker. The woods behind her was full of snow, and there was a flash of red roof just visible over one shoulder.

He read the caption: ‘ _Stakeout Selfie - six am but I look GOOD!_ ’

“What the hell?” he muttered. Nobody should know they were in Beacon Hills, and that red roof looked an awful lot like the roof of the freaking Red Roof Inn. 

“Hey Victor, do you know this girl?” he asked, thrusting the phone under Victor’s nose as he attempted to fashion his snow-self a gold medal out of a handful of gum wrappers and an oak leaf.

“Huh? Uh - “ Victor squinted, then shook his head. “That looks like something you’d wear.”

“I’m way too chic for a trapper hat,” Yuri muttered, looking away.

•○•

They reconvened at the diner at half past six, claiming the big semicircular booth in the back of the restaurant and cycling through the events of the day. Lydia was glad they were seated - it reduced Derek to clenching and unclenching his fists instead of pacing the room.

Lydia, cozy in cashmere, nursed a hot cocoa as she scrawled notes freehand into a spiral.

“Anything else?”

“Isn’t that enough?” Derek growled.

“Snow-dusted corpse, face frozen with into a hideous facsimile of terrible laughter, smells like wet hair, salt, fish, panic.” She sipped her cocoa. “Lovely.”

“Poor guy picked the wrong day for an evening jog,” Erica muttered.

“That sounds like general forrest-smell to me,” Boyd muttered. “Maybe the guy had sushi before he went out on his jog.”

Derek did not look amused. “It was …” he muttered, clearly grasping for words. “...disturbing. Really disturbing. He looked like he’d laughed himself to death.”

That gave Lydia pause. Derek was made of stern stuff - hell, he’d once ripped out a relative’s throat after Stiles lit the guy on fire. It was unusual to see anything get under his skin like this. 

“No blood, no signs of physical injury, likely dead since late last night,” she said carefully. “That means that whatever this was likely happened before our surveillance began.”

“That’s pretty creepy,” Boyd admitted. “Katsuki practiced until eleven and then left the rink. We didn’t actually open, so I followed him out - he just went back to the inn and didn’t come out again.

Stiles leaned forward, his elbows braced on the table and fingers steepled ridiculously. “Anything on your end, Erica?”

Erica shrugged. “Not really. They mostly romped around make weirdly detailed snowmen and then got into a snowball fight. They were back at the inn by three.”

“So, you’re saying they might nocturnal,” Stiles muttered, frowning at the thought. “Sleeping all day, prowling all night…”

“Stilinski, Katsuki practiced his routines for four straight hours. I think it’d be way more suspicious if he _didn’t_ nap.”

Stiles made an annoyed face and Boyd shrugged. “Sorry, dude. If one of them is some kind of evil ice monster, I don’t think it’s Katsuki.”

“Boyd may be a little bit biased,” Erica teased. “He’s totally a fan.”

“He’s a good skater!” Boyd said defensively. “But he’s also quiet, and harmless, and offered to help me close up the rink when my boss called and told me they weren’t opening for the day. He’s coming back tomorrow.”

Lydia perked up. “Oh yeah? Maybe I’ll crash the rehearsal. I’d love to see him work.”

“Can we please focus on the corpse?” Scott asked. Both he and Allison were thoroughly bundled up, even in the warm interior of the diner. The combination of turtlenecks and scarves absolutely screamed ‘hickies’ to Lydia. Allison clearly enjoyed being manhandled by her hunky werewolf boyfriend.

Lydia couldn’t blame her. Jackson hadn’t been good for much, but he’d definitely been good at--

“Lydia? Hello?”

Her eyes snapped to Derek’s face and she smiled serenely. “I’m sorry?”

“I said, does anything add up?”

Shaking her head, Lydia shrugged. “Honestly? No. Obviously the death is suspicious and probably supernatural, unless the poor bastard found freezing to death hilarious. The Russians did spend all day frolicking in the snow to no ill effect, but they both grew up someplace with incredibly cold winters. They’re obviously just used to it.”

“I called my dad,” Allison offered, leaning into Scott’s shoulder. “He told me it didn’t sound like anything he was familiar with, but told us to be careful and gave me the combination to the garage safe with an arctic strain of wolfsbane that might come in handy.”

“Are arctic werewolves a thing?” Stiles wondered aloud, thoroughly distracted. “Do their coats change colors?”

“That’s foxes,” Derek muttered.

“Arctic were-foxes, then.”

“I think we need to continue the stakeout overnight,” Lydia decided. “The last murder happened both at night and when the snow was actively falling. We don’t know if this creature affects the weather and thus it snows when it hunts, or if the falling snow signals that it’s safe for it to go on the prowl. Either way, if we’re not out there we won’t be able to stop any more deaths.”

“I nominate Scott and Allison,” Erica said immediately. “They _totally_ blew off stakeout duty just to make out all day.”

“We did not!” Scott protested. “We were researching!”

“Researching what, anatomy?”

“Scott, Allison, and Isaac will take the overnight shift,” Derek agreed. “You can take turns sleeping in the car.”

Isaac’s mouth dropped open in protest. “But--”

“It’s fine,” Scott said quickly, interjecting himself between the two men. “It shouldn’t be too hard to camp the Inn.”

“Yeah,” Isaac agreed, anger subsiding. “Alright.”

Derek turned to Stiles, expression intent. “Stiles, is your dad working tonight?”

“He’s not scheduled, but when townspeople croak it always means overtime.”

“Okay. You’re going to order a take-away meal and see if he let’s any information slip when you deliver it.”

Stiles groaned. “Dude, there is like, literally nothing heart-healthy on this menu--”

“Chicken sandwich,” Derek said automatically. “Grilled. Get him a fruit cup instead of fries, and a coffee instead of a soda.”

Stiles looked like he wanted to protest further, but he subsided when Derek leveled a finger at Derek and Lydia. “You two will be at the rink in the morning. Boyd, can you get Lydia a spare uniform so that she looks like she works at the rink?

“All my stuff is going to be huge on her,” Boyd pointed out. “Lydia can skate. Just pretend like you’re there to practice - or like, bring Stilinski and pretend to teach him. Katuski will be used to skating with others on the ice.”

“I’m awful at ice-skating,” Stiles muttered. Lydia remember Stiles flailing around on the ice like a baby giraffe their sophomore year and decided that she liked this plan.

“YOU!”

The entire table jerked in unison, Stiles’ fork clattering against the linoleum and Erica’s diet coke sloshing over in a wave of sticky-soda.

Yuri Plisetsky was striding towards them, his entire frame stiff with aggressive annoyance. Beside Lydia, Derek began to growl low in his throat - until Stiles and Lydia reached out in unison, Stiles placing a supportive hand on his forearm and Lydia pinching his thigh, hard. 

He reached the table and shoved one finger into Erica’s face, scowling. “What the hell is your deal?”

“W-wha?” Erica stuttered, uncharacteristically lost for words

“Don’t give me that - not only did you follow me on instagram, You were staking out the Red Roof Inn just to catch a glimpse of us!”

Erica, snapped at the finger floating in front of her and Yuri jerked his hand away, howling. “And you _bit_ me?!” he shrieked. “How dare you--”

Victor and Yuuri appeared in a flurry of rushed steps and frantic hands. Victor grabbed Yuri and jerked him away from Erica and the table at large. He began speaking in rapid, angry Russian. 

Yuuri covered his mouth with one hand, then realized half of the Beacon Hills pack was staring at him. “I am so sorry,” he started. “I have no idea-- oh! Hello, Boyd!”

“Hey man,” Boyd said, giving Yuuri a surprisingly friendly smile. “Good to see you again.”

“This is so embarrassing,” Yuuri muttered. “I’m so sorry about this--”

“Is there a problem here?” The group froze. Their waitress, a harried-looking woman in her mid-fifties, _obviously_ had no time for teenage drama. 

“No!” Victor told her, raising his hands to gesture expansively at their group. “Not at all, ma’am! We were just excited to see some friendly faces in town, and my friend here got a bit overly excited...”

“Lie,” Derek muttered, his werewolf senses tingling.

The waitress scowled. “Can I get you anything else?”

“Yyyyes,” Stiles squeaked. “Can I get something for take-away? Chicken sandwich, fruit cup, large coffee?”

“I’d like a shake,” Allison added. “Strawberry, please.”

After another long moment of the hairy eyeball the waitress nodded suspiciously and departed. Yuri, now free of Victor’s restraint, shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and glared at Erica. “Who are you, and why are you following us?”

“Aren’t you precious,” Erica snapped, her temper flaring. “What makes you thi--”

“Erica,” Boyd interrupted, raising a hand. Boyd so rarely interrupted anyone in the pack that when he did it it dropped a metaphorical bomb on the conversation. “It’s fine. This is a misunderstanding, and its entirely my fault.”

All eyes shifted to Boyd and he smiled sheepishly. Lydia blinked. Boyd didn’t smile as often as he should, but it really was a _nice_ smile. 

“Yurio, Victor, this is Boyd,” Yuuri said, seizing on the moment of silence. “He works at the local ice rink. He let me in this morning even though the rink was closed to the public.”

Next to the Yuris, Victor Nikiforov brightened instantly. “Ah! I owe you my thanks,” he told Boyd sincerely, flashing an _extremely_ tantalizing smile at the table. Lydia felt her frigid heart twitch despite herself. He really was an attractive specimen, all lashes and well-groomed hair and--

“I met Yuuri Katsuki at the rink this morning,” he told Yuri, simply. “I knew he would be traveling with you two, and a few of my friends here are huge figure skating fans, so when I told them you were in town they got a little overly excited.”

“You’re telling me you’re just die-hard fans?” Yuri asked suspiciously. “Die-hard fans who managed to figure out _where we’re sleeping?_ ”

At this point Stiles spoke up, raising a hand and flashing an equally harmless, friendly smile. “And that would be my fault. Sorry. You guys met my old man last night, see. When he got home he spotted Victor on sports page of the Beacon Hills Gazette - they did a piece on your big competition in Seattle. He mentioned he’d met you driving in and that you were staying at the Red Roof Inn.”

“The sheriff is your father?” Yuuri asked, surprised.

“Yup! Sheriff Stilinski, that’s my pop!” Stiles said with forced cheer

“Well, we were really grateful that he found us out on the road,” Victor said, smiling at them all. Beside him, Yuri didn’t look convinced - in fact, he looked completely furious to be standing there and chatting with the locals.

From where Lydia sat she could see Erica’s grit teeth when the blonde forced an embarrassed smile. “This is really embarrassing. Sorry, Yuri. It’s just unusual for us to have famous athletes in town. You’re an incredible skater and I wanted to get a selfie with you, so I just sort of… lurked?” 

Her big blue eyes must have had some kind of effect on Yuri, because he huffed. “I like your hat.”

Erica blinked. “Huh?”

“Your hat. Your -- your leopard-print…” voice grudging, he waved a hand at his skull and Erica grinned toothily. “Oh yeah? Sounds like perfect selfie fodder to me.”

She unfolded her long legs, stepping out of the booth and dropping the hat down on Yuri’s head. The resulting selfie was, in fact, pretty good.

“Well, I know we’re interrupting you,” Yuuri said sheepishly. “We’ll let you get back to your dinner.”

“Are you planning to stick around for much longer?” Lydia asked sweetly, batting her eyelashes.

“Um,” Yuuri squeaked. “Only as long as the snow keeps us. We’ve got to be in LA in six days, so we’re all hoping for a thaw.”

“That’s too bad,” Lydia said, pouting. “Well. I hope you enjoy Beacon Hills while you can, it’s really a beautiful town.”

“Beautiful and deadly,” Derek muttered as the skaters waved and moved away, filing towards a booth on the other side of the restaurant.

“That should be the name of my autobiography,” Lydia mused. 

Stiles turned to her, beaming like a headlight. “Oh my god - just when I thought I couldn’t possibly love you more, you toss out my favorite quote from _Iron Man 3._ ”

Between them, Derek shifted uncomfortably.

“ _I_ think you’re all delusional,” Alison announced, firmly. “There’s no way those guys are evil. They seemed lovely.”

“I’m with Allison,” Boyd agreed. “Besides, they don’t smell anything like the body you described, Derek.”

“But … _someone_ killed the jogger,” Scott said, lips pursing unhappily. Lydia suspected he _wanted_ the Russians to be guilty, if only because Allison found them so dreamy. “If it wasn’t them, then who was it?”

“That’s what we need to find out,” Derek said, voice dark with determination.

•○•

Scott fell asleep in the passenger seat of Allison’s car fifteen minutes into their stakeout. Isaac was stretched out in the back, gazing through the windows with one earbud in his right ear. Outside the car windows snow was falling gently, fluttering in the cones of light cast by the street lights.

“So, Isaac. Are you planning to leave Beacon Hills for college?” Allison asked quietly, her face pale in the reflected light of the street lamp outside.

Isaac shifted in his seat, pulling the earbud out of his ear and pausing his playlist. “I haven’t really thought about it,” he lied.

Allison glanced back at him sadly. The look on her face said, very plainly, that she knew he was lying. It was alarming, sometimes, how observant she could be.

“Okay, okay,” Isaac muttered, embarrassed. “I’ve thought about it. I just… I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” Allison said quietly. “Beacon Hills is so dangerous, but It’s hard to imagine living anywhere else.”

“Do you ever wonder if you’d… I don’t know. Miss it? All the action and intrigue and supernatural bullshit?”

Allison shrugged. “Considering my dad is still nominally hunting werewolves, I don’t think I could escape it even if I tried. It feels like the supernatural’s got its claws in me, now. Even if I wanted a normal life…”

Isaac bit his lip. “You were normal before your dad moved you to Beacon Hills, right? I mean - you didn’t know what the family business entailed.”

“I guess,” Allison said, doubtfully. “For a given value of normal. I was still essentially raised from birth to be a fighter. Mixed martial arts, archery lessons, Saturdays at the firing range with dad…”

“So you’re saying you’re a lifer,” Isaac said. He wasn’t sure why the thought made him sad. Allison was such a lovely person. She might be skilled in violent arts, but violence itself didn’t really suit her.

“I have some money from my dad,” he admitted as the conversation lagged. “I mean, he didn’t have a will, but I’m the only living descendant and I had to sell the house when he died. I just - I always wanted to leave. I thought I’d be out of here the second the final bell rang on my last day of high school. I wanted to be gone.”

“And now?” Allison asked, eyebrows peaking.

“Can I really leave?” he asked, shrugging. “I mean, obviously I can physically leave, but I’m a werewolf now. Derek’s my alpha, and Derek’s pretty obviously going nowhere fast.”

“I think he’s getting better,” Allison mused.

“That’s because you see the good in everyone,” Isaac countered. Allison shifted and their eyes met in the darkness, the moment long and lingering. 

“If you trust my judgement at all, trust me when I say that Derek is getting better,” Allison said, quietly, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “If I can forgive him and see good in him, anyone can.”

Isaac had to concede - _that_ was certainly true. 

“And when it comes to you - I think you can find a way to do whatever you want to do.”

He shifted his gaze away. “I hope you’re right.”

Three hours later, Allison nudged Scott awake and shifted her own seat back into a reclining position. Isaac leaned up against the window of the car again, the cold of the snowy night seeping through the back of his hoodie, and watched her fall asleep.

“It’s weird to think these skaters guys have been living all over the world, without their parents, since they were kids.”

Scott shifted in the front seat. “What do you mean?”

“I mean - I was reading about it. A lot of them move internationally in order to be coached by some specific dude. They’re away from home for years at a time, and basically do nothing but skate and compete.”

“It’s hard to imagine being that good at a sport,” Scott said with a self-deprecating smile.

“You’re great at lacrosse,” Isaac reminded him, loyally.

“Yeah, but only because I got bitten by an evil magical dog and acquired phenomenal cosmic powers,” Scott muttered. “You remember how it was - I was born a bench warmer and would have graduated a bench warmer.”

“You worked hard at it, though.”

“Yeah,” Scott said, thoughtfully. “For all the good it did me.”

“Are you going to leave Beacon Hills for college?” Isaac blurted, then bit his lip. He’d been avoiding this conversation with Scott, mostly because he knew his friend was waiting to figure out what Allison was doing before making his own decisions. It might be naive to build your future plans around your highschool girlfriend, but Scott would certainly try. 

As long as Allison let him.

Scott did glance at Allison, but much to Isaac’s surprise, his answer didn’t have much to do with her at all. “I don’t know. With my mom here and everything… Beacon Hills is dangerous. It’s practically a freaking hellmouth. I can’t imagine leaving her here just so I could take classes somewhere fancy.”

“I sort of thought you’d go where Allison went,” Isaac said, tentatively.

“I don’t know,” Scott said again. “I mean, I love her. But we both know she’s hella smarter than me, so following may not really be an option. She should go to the best school she can get into, even if I can’t get in too.”

Isaac laughed.

“I don’t hear you denying it,” Scott said, affronted. Isaac glanced up and caught a glimpse of his smile in the rear-view mirror, so he knew he was joking. 

“What about you?” Scott asked.

“I’ve never wanted anything more than I wanted to see Beacon Hills in the rear view mirror,” Isaac admitted. 

Scott grunted appreciatively. He could guess why Isaac had been desperate to leave.

“It’s different now,” Isaac continued, looking out into the snow. “It’s different when you have something to leave behind.”

•○•

When Allison woke up the car was absolutely freezing - she exhaled in surprise and her breath puffed out in a cloud of icy white. She swore and reached out, fumbling at the ignition. The car rumbling to life woke Scott - who was _supposed to be awake and keeping watch_.

“Scott!” Allison exclaimed, reaching out and squeezing his knee, “Scott, wake up!”

“Buh?” Scott asked, staring at her blearily before sitting bolt upright. His hair was smushed in strange directions from sleeping against the carseat. He immediately realized where they were, eyes flying wide. “Oh shit! What time is it?” 

“Almost nine AM,” Allison said, throwing her hands up. “When did you fall asleep?”

“I don’t know,” Scott admitted, biting his lip. “Man, Derek is gonna be pissed.”

“If they really are evil snow monsters and they murdered someone else on our watch, _I’m_ going to be pissed!” Allison hissed.

In the back seat Isaac began to stir. He’d pulled his hood up over his head against the cold. “Mwwha? Do you see them? Are they leaving?”

Scott fumbled his phone out of his pocket and swore again. “Derek called twice,” he muttered. “My phone was on silent.”

“What did he say?”

“All three of them are at the rink,” Scott read. His expression dropped as he continued, and Allison knew exactly what his next words would be. “Oh, no.”

“What?!” Isaac demanded, half-climbing the passenger seat so that he could crane his head and look over Scott’s shoulder.

“They found another body,” Scott said, quietly. “Right next to the rink.”

•○•

Lydia stood in the lobby of the skating rink and squinted through the fogged front windows. Half a block down the road she could see the flashing red and blue of the police cars pulled into the parking lot. It was adjacent to the skating rink, separated only by a thin stream that was completely invisible under the layers of ice and snow.

Behind her, the sound of blades carving ice echoed throughout the rink. 

“Something’s not adding up,” she muttered. Lydia had always been good at seeing the equations, drawing conclusions, and answering questions. Today she felt blind. There too many variables and not enough clues. “We’ve missed something. What are they saying?”

Erica squinted through the glass, eyes unfocusing as she concentrated on her super-keen sense of hearing. Lydia imagined her friend as a true wolf, her ears perked and swiveling in an attempt to pick up distant sounds. “It’s definitely the same killer,” Erica said, quietly. She waited a beat, then added “but this poor bastard is much…. fresher.”

“Great,” Lydia said, feeling disquieted. No wonder she’d been unable to sleep last night. Her banshee blood had been pulsing in her veins, her own supernatural senses screaming that something was awry in Beacon Hills. These murders hadn’t caused the creepy midnight trances that the darach’s sacrificial rampage had inspired - but the sleepless nights and all-too-real nightmares were starting to feel familiar. They needed to get this cleared up before her “gifts” started kicking into overdrive.

She envied the wolves their super-hearing and super-strength. The ability to sense violent death was the worst superpower ever.

“What time did the Russians arrive at the rink?”

“Seven thirty.”

“How fresh are we talking?”

Erica shrugged. “The coroner hasn’t arrived yet, but it’s definitely not frozen. Still - warm-ish, apparently.”

“So they could have committed the murder on the way in,” Lydia mused. “And we haven’t heard from Scott and company.” 

“Derek’s gone after them,” Erica said, reaching out and squeezing Lydia’s elbow comforting. “I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

“Of course they’ll be fine,” Lydia said, forcing confidence into her tone. “Allison is with them.”

Behind them, there was a shriek and a crash. Lydia jumped in surprise and whirled around, then relaxed when she found the extremely _un_ surprising root of the noise. 

Stiles Stilinski had gone ass over teakettle in his skates … and he hadn’t even reached the rink. He lay sprawled in a mess of gangly limbs against the odd-smelling plastic flooring that filled the entire skate-rental and concession area. 

Lydia had been totally right - baby giraffe. Maybe a blind baby giraffe, even.

She left Erica to handle the police surveillance and helped Stiles up, allowing him to use her as a human crutch as they walked over to the ice. “Let me get my skates on and I’ll give you a hand,” she said, smirking. Stiles flashed her his bitchiest expression, but only prodded the ice with the grooved nose of his blade while he waited.

Lydia settled herself on one of the long bleacher seats, pulling her skates out of her bag. She hadn’t visited the rink since that night she and Stiles went on their ill-fated, one-sided double-date escorting Scott and Allison to the rink - God, Lydia had earned _all_ the best friend points for putting up with Stiles at the height of his Lydia-philia. It had even been fun at times - Stiles had been in the panting-and-desperate stage of his crush, but he was still good company. 

Allison and Scott had been a new romance, and he’d obviously wanted to impress her - but he was the least talented skater Lydia had ever seen, and even his werewolf superpowers hadn’t been able to save him from repeated humiliation on the surface of the ice. Stiles’ jaw had hit the floor as she executed a few simple spins - he obviously didn’t remember she’d taken skating lessons for years...

But try as she might, she couldn’t ignore the horrible parts of her last ice skating experience. She’d just been coming into her powers, and she’d been under the influence of a nefarious evil spirit keen on on manipulating her into bringing him back from the dead. She’d had one of her living-nightmare trances, hallucinating fields of wolfsbane flowers trapped under ice, framing the haunting face of Peter Hale.

She shivered, fingers trembling as she attempted to tie up her laces for the second time. There had been two deaths in the last two days. What would she see if she looked down into the depths of the ice?

“Lydia?” Stiles asked. When she glanced up she realized he’d managed to close the distance between them without falling. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Lydia whispered, her throat scratchy.

“I don’t have to be a werewolf to know that’s a lie,” Stiles told her, smiling wryly.

“I’m just thinking about the last time we were here,” Lydia admitted. It felt a bit better to say it out loud. Everyone in Beacon Hills had their fair share of trauma. She supposed it was okay to occasionally let her own peek through.

Besides, this was _Stiles_.

“I was thinking about that too,” he admitted, looking out at the ice. They watched Victor Nikiforov execute an effortless quad jump in perfect silence, then looked at each other again.

Stiles had that same look on his face - the look he’d worn when he saw Lydia skate for the first time. The shock of it made her laugh out loud.

“Do you remember your lame attempts at flirting with me?” Lydia asked, smiling faintly at the memories.

“I remember being totally traumatized that you weren’t a Mets fan,” Stiles countered, clinging to the shreds of his dignity.

Lydia dropped the pitch of her voice, completing her Stiles imitation with flailing hands. “Sometimes two things that you don’t think should go together go together perfectly,” she paraphrased, laughing as he swatted at her.

“I thought we agreed never to speak of my embarrassing crush,” Stiles protested, helping her up from the bench and giving her hands a squeeze.

“I agreed not to speak of your embarrassing crush in _public_ ,” Lydia countered.

“This _is_ public!”

“No one’s listening,” Lydia laughed.

“I’m totally listening!” Erica shouted from the front door.

“So am I,” Boyd hollered from the concession stand.

Stiles groaned in embarrassment.

“Besides, you were right,” Lydia told him, linking their arms as they walked towards the skating rink. “Not in the way you wanted to be right, of course. But we do work well together.”

Stiles beamed at her. “Can you say that again once more? I just want to get it on the record, maybe set it as my ringtone…”

Lydia smiled.

She and Stiles took to the ice carefully. The ice rink was enormous, but Victor, Yuuri and Yuri covered huge swaths of it in no time at all. Yuri Plisetsky delighted in swinging in close to buzz them, sometimes spraying shavings on them, other times showboating as he glided past. Katsuki was kinder, slowing down and giving Stiles pointers on his form. He wasn’t a bad skater, exactly - he was just a very cautious and very awkward. 

One day Stiles would grow into his limbs, finish developing a sense of balance, and be able to move like a normal person … but that day wasn’t today. 

If Lydia ignored the reflection of red and blue lights bouncing off the sliding glass doors at the mouth of the rink she could almost pretend like today was a normal day, that she and Stiles were out doing something fun together as friends, enjoying one another’s company.

It didn’t last long. 

When the hanging light at the back of the rink flickered and fizzled, Lydia watched it out of the corner of her eye and then went back to her skate. She thought little of it until its neighbor proceeded to sizzle and pop out a few short seconds later.

Lydia slid to a stop gracefully, while Stiles simply slammed into the barrier and hung on for dear life.

A third light sizzled and died. It was as though something was extinguishing them, something invisible and moving closer.

“We have to get off the ice,” Lydia hissed, scrambling towards Stiles. “GET OFF THE ICE!” she shouted, just as something slender, pale, and _hungry_ emerged from the surface of the rink. 

It was physically impossible. Logically Lydia knew the ice beneath her feet was only a few inches deep and solid as a rock, and yet this ice monster was drawing up out of it, the surface of the ice rippling and flowing upward like a glacier on time-lapse film. The ice cracked and broke away, each falling chunk revealing another inch of hideous glistening blue-pale skin.

Stiles immediately fell again, crashing to the ice in a panic.

Victor slowed and pulled up next to her, Katsuki just behind him. They both wore worried expressions. “What’s going on, Lydia?” 

“I don’t know - why don’t you tell me,” she growled, her teeth grit as her eyes raked over the monster, searching frantically for any clue as to its nature.

“How would we know?” Yuri Plisetsky asked, skidding to a stop beside Stiles and glaring down at him.

“Come clean!” Stiles demanded, wobbling back to his feet and glaring at each of the visitors in turn. “You expect us to believe that you just happened to roll into town, fresh off the plane from Russia, on the day that creepy ice demon starts axing people in town?”

“We drove down from Seattle!” Victor protested, as though _that_ was even the point.

“Whatever, hello, _demon incoming!_ ” Stiles snapped, thrusting his palm out at the monster and muttering a few short, unintelligible words. The monster staggered momentarily, letting out a hideous bellow of rage.

“Demon?!” Katsuki squeaked, whirling to look at the creature again. The rink was now shrouded in twilight, lit only by the dusty skylights high overhead. The monster was at least eight feet tall and _still growing_.

“It’s just some guy in a mask,” Plisetsky decided, rolling his eyes. “I bet it’s one of their friends from the diner who’s just trying to fuck with us.”

Katsuki turned wide, pleading eyes on Lydia. Victor set his hand on his shoulder comfortingly. “This isn’t funny, guys.”

“It’s not a joke,” Stiles snapped back. He whipped out his phone and tapped the 1 on his speed dial to call in backup. “It’s a -- demon, or something like a demon.”

“Yeah, ri--”

The monster ripped first one foot and then the other out of the ice and pivoted, its malformed body turning to face their group. It began to stalk forward, each step dislodging avalanches of dusty frost from its sinewy shoulders.

Yuri fished his phone out of his pocket and up instagram. “Cool,” he said, grudgingly. “Is that like, dry ice?”

“You are _not_ updating your insta-story right now,” Victor hissed, grabbing Plisetsky and Katsuki by the arms and hauling them closer to him. “I have no idea why you think we have anything to do with this, but we’re _leaving_.”

A thunderous crack and a whistling sound broke through their shouted conversation. Lydia looked up just in time to see a chunk of the ice rink sailing towards them. “Duck!” she ordered.

“Run!” Victor shouted at the same moment. 

Stiles threw himself flat on his face just in time for the projectile to soar over his head and crash into the plexiglass wall behind them. Victor, Plisetsky and Katsuki scattered, splitting away from Lydia and Stiles and streaking towards the exit at a breakneck speed. The creature’s attention was caught by their quick movement and it pounced, keen to ensnare its prey with slender knife-like fingers. 

One of those fingers caught the edge of Katsuki’s Team Japan hoodie. Its strength combined with his speed sent his feet flying out from under him; but instead of falling backwards, he simply hung, scrambling, from the creature’s grip. Victor and Plisetsky were almost off the ice when the sound of Yuri’s scream pulled them up short.

“Go, get out of here,” Victor ordered Plisetsky, shoving him towards the skate-rental area.

Yuri’s eyes were fixed on where Yuuri was dangling helplessly some ten feet above the ice, suspended over a giant drooling maw. “But, Yuuri--”

“I’ll get Yuuri!” Victor snapped. “I can’t worry about both of you at once!”

“I can take care of myself,” Yuri snapped right back, turning resolutely to face the monster. “I want to help.”

The creature hoisted Katsuki high in the air, his legs kicking helplessly as the creature let out a deep, grating cackle. Its eyes were pure white and its teeth dripped with viscous purple goo. As they watched, it carved another chunk of ice free with its free claws and sent in spinning directly at the skaters. It cracked apart in mid-air, one baseball-sized chunk catching Plisetsky in the arm and another clipping him in the side of the face. The rest exploded against the ice between them.

Plisetsky staggered and slumped, Victor’s hands shooting out automatically to prop him of. “Yuri!” he said, attention momentarily diverted. “Yuri, it’s going to be okay. Please, just wait here.”

Erica appeared next to them out of nowhere, grabbing Plisetsky by the arm. She was strong, and none-too-gentle as she dragged him away, slowing only to let him grab his blade protectors off the wall of the skating rink. “Get over here, Plisetsky! We’ll distract it and buy Victor some time!”

Yuuri grunted in pain, but let himself be tugged away.

Victor spared Erica a terrified-yet-grateful look, then whirled charged off in the direction of the monster.

•○•

Yuuri’s heart was thundering as he twisted and thrashed ten feet above the ice. This close to the strange creature, he could make out every inch of its hideous features with frightening clarity. It resembled a slender, sinewy frozen corpse, its skin pale and tinged with blue. Its facial features were only nominally humanoid, with pupil-less and narrow slit-eyes gazing out over a mouth that was entirely too wide to look natural. Its long, waist-length black hair was inky and lank, pouring over its skull and shoulders like an oil spill.

One thing was for sure - this wasn’t some teenager in a costume. This was a real monster, and the implications of _that_ were just as terrifying as his current predicament. What’s more, the disgusting purple goo dripping from its open maw looked _familiar_ \- it looked just like the steaming splatters he’d seen on the pavement last night.

 _’This is what Victor nearly hit,’_ Yuuri realized, heart clenching in his chest. This monster had nearly run them off the road - it must have been hunting for its dinner. He imagined it lurking in the woods, staring at him as he looked for signs of an animal in distress, and shivered.

The creature let out a long, low growl. The sound of it jerked Yuuri back to the present. He was no damsel in distress - and he didn’t need his hands free to do damage to this thing.

“Let - me - go!” he shouted, wrenching his legs upwards and slashing at the monster’s arm with the blades of his skates. The sharp metal made contact, gouging grooves into the icy flesh. Startled, the monster roared and flung Yuuri away at top speed.

The world flashed around him for a moment, pale ice and dark ceiling spinning as he fell. Fortunately for Yuuri, if he had learned one thing over his lifetime of ice skating, it was how to fall without hurting himself..

He tucked himself in, speeding his rotation, and bent his knees in a way that would have had Coach Cialdini cheering. When his skates struck the ground he dropped one hand into a three-point landing, shooting backwards across the ice. He let out a whoop of triumph just before plowing into the wall and falling to his knees.

“Yuuri!” Victor shouted. Yuuri looked up just in time to see the monster hurl another chunk of ice at Victor. Victor -- never one to do anything by half -- leapt into the air, twisting into a spin that neatly dodged the flying ice. He landed and then jumped again, powerful legs launching him over the debris that littered the ice around the creature. He executed a beautiful triple lutz before landing and continuing his charge.

Then, at the entrance to the ice rink, something _roared_. For an urgent moment Yuuri wondered if he’d fallen on his head after all; he actually lifted a hand to his forehead to check for bumps or lumps. _Something_ stood at the edge of the rink. A fit, humanoid body glazed with hair, its features twisted into a snarling red-eyed visage of rage. Panic welled up within him as he put two and two together - the ice monster had a friend, and that friend was flanking Victor.

Yuuri staggered to his feet. “Look out!” he gasped out, heart contracting with fear. “Victor, we’ve got more company!”

The wolfman shot a glare in his direction and rolled his eyes. 

Yuuri blinked.

“It’s cool, kid!” Erica shouted from behind him. “That’s Derek! He’s one of us!”

Derek charged out onto the ice and immediately slipped, crashing face-first into the surface of the rink. Yuuri winced in sympathy when he came up again. His nose was bloody-red to match his eyes.

Yuuri spun, catching a glimpse of Erica and Yuri. Yuri was clutching at his shoulder with a glazed, pained expression on his face. As Yuuri watched, Erica reached down and ripped one of the bleachers out of the concrete floor with a grunt and a shriek of twisting metal.

She did it one-handed, and didn’t even break a sweat.

 _’She’s not human either,’_ he realized, shuddering.

Back on the ice, Victor slid gracefully beneath one of the creature’s outstretched arms and caught a fistful of its hair, using his momentum to yank its head backwards and pull it down to the hard surface of the ice. Erica seized that moment to hurl the bleacher through the air like a javelin, her eyes shining strange and gold with the effort. The bleacher’s hard-metal edges bit into the creatures’ torso with a sickening crunch, and shards of ice sprayed everywhere.

Victor’s momentum continued to drag the creature across the ice even as it thrashed, attempting to dig its claws into the rink and stand again. Within seconds it was within striking distance of Stiles and Lydia, and Yuuri watched as Stiles Stilinski, the kindly sheriff’s son, raised his hands and made a complicated gesture. Then there was a flash of light and an honest-to-goodness _fireball_ bloomed into existence, engulfing the creature in a hot flash of flame.

The monster began to shriek and scream in rage - a scream that petered out when Derek landed atop its chest and drove his claws into the creature’s throat. Blue blood splashed out against the ice, steaming and freezing instantly. Derek ignored the flames still licking across the monster’s black hair and tattered clothing, his red eyes flashing bright and bloody.

The creature went still and the rink grew quiet save the sounds of Derek’s repeated strikes, so Yuuri moved towards Victor again, desperate to know he was alright.

Stiles, on the other hand, scrambled towards the wolfman and the corpse. “Der, I’ve got it! It’s a Mahaha!”

“Stiles, this isn’t funny,” the wolf snapped, punctuating each word with a blow to the creatures’ face. The monster’s frigid blue blood splashed across one cheek, but Derek didn’t even flinch.

“No, dumbass! It’s a Mahaha, that’s the name! Ancient inuit monster, feeds off of laughter, tickles people to death?”

The werewolf froze in mid-slash, shooting Stiles a look of pure disbelief. “Who comes up with this shit?” he growled, annoyed.

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Probably someone who saw their buddy get, I don’t know, _tickled to death_?”

Yuuri had almost reached Victor when a shrill siren pierced the air and it began to rain. Yuuri gasped as the cold water struck him and looked up incredulously. Stiles’ fireball and its billowing black smoke had set off the fire alarm, including the sprinklers. 

Yuuri was drenched by the time he reached Victor.

“Stiles!” Derek barked.

“What?” Stiles shouted back, hands cupped around his mouth in order to be heard over the pulsing alarm. “Running water, dude! Everything’s weak against running water!”

Victor and Yuuri met a few meters away from the fallen creature. Victor immediately seized Yuuri by the elbow and spent a long moment devouring Yuuri with his sharp, concerned gaze. He reached out to smudge at Yuuri’s mouth with a thumb that came away red with blood. Yuuri must have bitten his lip in the ruckus - he hadn’t even noticed. 

Yuuri pressed closer until Victor dropped his chin down and touched their foreheads together. “Are you okay?”

“Of course,” Victor agreed. “And you?”

“Fine,” Yuuri assured him. “All things considered.”

He pulled Yuuri tightly against him and Yuuri pressed his face into Victor’s neck, shivering. “This really happening?”

“As far as I can tell,” Victor agreed grimly. He broke away to brush back the wet bangs plastered to his forehead. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here and into something dry. Yuri took a hit to the head, so we probably need to stop by the hospital.”

Yuuri smiled despite his shivering. Leave it to Victor to face down a monster and then only worry about other people.

The falling water quickly extinguished the flames eating away at the monster, sending clouds of steam and smoke drifting up in the rafters high overhead. Derek and Stiles were still bickering fruitlessly when the monster jackknifed suddenly, sending Derek sprawling into Stiles. The two flailing men slid a few feet on the rough ice and then scrambled to untangle their limbs. 

“Running water, huh?” Yuuri heard Derek shout. 

“It should have worked!” Stiles snapped back, his eyes growing wide as the Mahaha regained its footing and loomed over the both of them. Its spindly fingers stretched out towards their prone figures and its mouth split open, the grin growing larger by the second.

Stiles began to chuckle nervously, then slapped a hand over his mouth. Was he crazy laughing at a time like this?”

“Stiles,” Derek barked, before huffing out a sharp laugh of his own. “This isn’t funny!”

“It - “ Stiles started, laughing harder. “It feeds off of laughter--”

The Mahaha stepped forward, its posture distinctly hungry as it closed the distance to Derek and Stiles. Before it could strike, Yuuri lurched forward instinctively, waving his arms and shouting at the top of his lungs. 

“Over here!” He cried, reaching down. His fingers found a chunk of ice and he wrested it upwards, flinging it at the monster. The ice bounced satisfyingly off of its wide, disfigured head. The creature’s attention swiveled away from the prone teenagers, fixing instead on Victor and Yuuri.

“Now what?” Victor asked, barely audible over the shrieking fire alarm.

The Mahaha roared and raised its hands, dropping the temperature in the room by at least twenty degrees. Yuuri gasped, his breath hanging in clouds in the air before him. The dirty water pouring from the fire sprinklers high above flash-froze, transforming from frigid rain into long icicles and marble sized hail that rained down across everyone in the room in a thunderous, painful wave. Yuuri threw his hands up to protect his head and winced as tiny projectiles struck all along his arms and scalp. 

They needed a plan, damn it - they needed to do something proactive that would buy Derek and Stiles the time they needed time to get back on the offensive before they giggling themselves to death. 

Yuuri took a deep breath, steeling himself for action. He and Victor were more adept on the ice than anyone else in the room, and Victor had downed the creature once - maybe they could do it again. 

“Victor,” he shouted, stripping off his hoodie and swinging it overhead. “Grab a sleeve!” he ordered, flinging half the garment in Victor’s direction.

Victor - quick as always - snagged a sleeve out of the air and stared at him. “What are you doing?” he gasped. When Yuuri began moving he went with him instinctively, rolling up onto one blade and relying on weight and momentum to navigate through the minefield of debris scattered across the rink.

“Taking out the right leg,” Yuuri said quickly, leaping over a three-inch-wide fracture in the ice. “Star Wars style!”

“You’re crazy,” Victor told him, grinning madly at the idea. 

Victor and Yuuri had always found an easy rhythm together. From the moment they met to the moment they first skated together, their connection was instantaneous and simple. It was easy to move in tandem, dodging left and right, neatly evading obstacle after obstacle as they hurtled towards the creature. 

The Mahaha watched them draw close, then swept its hands into the air and began slinging the frozen stalactites dropping from the overhead sprinklers like javelins. They whistled through the air, zipping past the men and shattering the moment they struck the ground. Yuuri and Victor were able to dodge most, though one sliced along Yuuri’s cheek painfully and another sliced through Victor’s right sleeve, leaving behind a red gash that made Yuuri’s stomach churn.

Still standing amongst the ruined bleachers, Erica hurled another two metal benches at the monster. Her strikes temporarily disrupted the stream of projectiles just in time for them to pick up speed and close the distance. Yuuri and Victor made eye contact briefly, then - Victor threw himself into action. He aimed between the monster’s legs for the second time that night, clinging to the sleeve of Yuuri’s hoodie in a white-knuckled grip.

The Team Japan hoodie caught the creature just above the ankle, and the short length of it jerked Victor back. He and Yuuri were each jerked inwards and collided roughly, collapsing in a heap on the ice. It wasn’t the most graceful end to their heroic charge - but they weren’t the only ones to fall. The monster teetered and slammed down into the ice, sending sharp cracks shooting in every direction. 

Yuuri and Victor didn’t pause to celebrate - they both scrambled away, digging into the ice with their skates and putting distance between themselves and the fallen Mahaha. Victor came up with chunks of ice in his hands, hurling them at the monster while Yuuri kicked at its flailing arm, taking off two icy fingers with a slice of his knife-like blade.

“Take that!” he shouted. Two shattered fingers skittered away across the ice.

“Derek, the bleachers!” Lydia shouted. Yuuri had almost forgotten she was there - she was hunkered against the far edge of the rink, drenched and angry. The plexiglass wall behind her was too high to climb over, and she was as far from the exit as it was possible to get. “It’s frozen solid! Use blunt force, not claws!”

Derek roared and snatched up one of the ten-foot-long bleachers littering the ice, gripping it like a baseball bat. Victor and Yuuri scrambled away as Derek began to swing the metal bench with all his might. He got in three solid hits before one of the monster’s disproportionately, long arms lashed out in his direction and caught him squarely in the face. The force of it snapped his head sideways and he dropped into a crumpled heap.

“DEREK!” Stiles cried, whirling towards the blood-smeared ice. 

Derek didn’t get up.

“I’ve got him,” Lydia shouted from her place against the wall. She struck out towards Derek’s prone form, surprisingly confident on her skates. 

Stiles’ face twisted in determination as he spun back to face the looming Mahaha. Yuuri wondered if he was going to cast another magic spell - but instead he just cupped his hands around his mouth and began to shout over the din of the fire alarm. “WHAT DO YOU CALL A COW LAYING ON THE GROUND!” 

Lydia slid to a stop next to Derek’s prone form. She grabbed two fistfulls of leather jacket and began dragging him away from the fight. 

“GROUND BEEF!” Stiles shouted at the top of his lungs.

The creature froze, twitched, and then let out a short, sharp huff. To Yuuri’s ears it sounded suspiciously like a grating ….. laugh?

“It feeds on laughter,” Victor murmured. Yuuri was surprised by how well he was taking this situation - but then again, he’d always heard Russians were notoriously superstitious. Maybe ice monsters were all par for the course when you grew up in a land of ice and snow.

Galvanized by the response, Stiles took a step towards the monster, wobbling on his skates. “HOW DO YOU COUNT COWS?”

The creature’s head tipped to the left, not unlike a dog waiting for a treat.

“WITH A COWCULATOR!!” Stiles finished, adding jazz hands for good measure. 

This time Yuuri was certain that the guttural noise coming from the creature was a laugh. The Mahaha’s gaping maw tipped backwards and shook outright, its hands seizing convulsively with amusement.

Victor let out a little giggle next to Yuuri. Yuuri gave him a dry look.

“What?” he asked, grinning. “That was pretty good!”

“Was it?” Yuuri asked, voice thick with disbelief.

A flash of motion caught Yuuri’s eye at the other end of the rink, and he realized -- suddenly -- what Stiles was trying to do. The kid was distracting the Mahaha, but he wasn’t distracting it from Lydia and Derek, as Yuuri had first assumed. He was distracting it from Boyd.

Boyd entered the rink, perched atop the rink’s bright blue Zamboni. The ice-washing machine was nearly-silent as it moved, the hum of its engine and the crunch of shattered ice beneath its tires completely covered by the shrill fire alarm. It was huge and intimidating, but it was also slow.

Nevertheless, Boyd was chugging along at its top speed of five miles an hour, aimed directly at the Mahaha. 

_‘What’s that going to do?’_ he wondered, frantically. It was going far too slow to do any real damage, and yet...

“Have you seen A Fish Called Wanda?” Victor asked him, grinning fiercely. 

“I don’t think so,” Yuuri said, blinking.

“I’m putting it on the watch-list,” Victor decided, folding his arms in satisfaction.

“WHY DO COWS WEAR BELLS?” Stiles demanded, voice cracking as he shouted.

“How many cow jokes does this guy _know?”_ Yuuri whispered.

“BECAUSE THEIR HORNS DON’T WORk--WAHHH!”

Yuuri wasn’t sure if that final joke was too bad -- or too tempting -- for the monster. No sooner had Stiles finished his punchline than the Mahaha struck, moving as quickly as a snake. Its long, spindly fingers stretched out and knocked Stiles to the ice, digging in as he fell. For a gruesome moment Yuuri thought the teenager had been horrifically impaled - but no. Stiles threw his head back and began to laugh hysterically, writhing beneath the creature’s tickling grasp. 

The Mahaha’s entire figure shuddered as it cackled gleefully. The air around its fingers began to shimmer like pavement on a hot day, and Stiles’ voice pitched up slightly. His breath began to sound thin and wheezy around his hysterical bouts of laughter.

“STILES!” Erica screamed from the stands.

The zamboni crept closer, and Stiles started to cry with mirth; tears streaming down his face. 

Finally, Derek began to stir. He sat up from Lydia’s lap, bleary-eyed. His features were perfectly human again, and Yuuri was surprised to realize they’d actually met in the diner the night before.

“What the…”

“Oh my god,” Victor muttered, eyes wide and startled. “He’s a _werewolf._ ”

Yuuri licked his lips nervously, his heart flip-flopping in his chest. “Werewolf or not, we have to do something,” Yuuri said, watching Stiles writhe against the ice with growing dread. “He’s killing Stiles.”

“Boyd is almost there,” Victor said, grabbing to his wrist and jutting his chin at Boyd. “Stiles was clearly trying to play bait.”

Yuuri shook his head frantically. “There’s no way that a _zamboni_ is going to--”

Even as he spoke, Stiles’ body shuddered, going completely rigid and then then slumping bonelessly back against the ice. 

Then, before Derek or Yuuri or the Mahaha could move, Lydia _screamed_.

•○•

A banshee’s scream was psychically supersonic. It was to every supernatural creature in the room what the fire alarm was to the humans: grating, ear-splitting, and nearly unbearable.

For solid material it was even worse. The skylights high overhead shattered, adding fractured glass to mix of sparkling shards that scattered across the ice rink. The fire alarms screamed and then died, their electronic components exhausted. The sliding doors at the front of the rink cracked through, fracturing the image of police cars pulling into the icy parking lot outside.

For the Mahaha, the Banshee’s scream was death. 

The monster went rigid over Stiles, its rictus-smile freezing and its hands stilling. It’s expression didn’t give any sign of pain or understanding - it simply went still as a terrible cracking sound echoed through the room. 

Lydia’s scream knocked Derek to the ice again, his hands clapped over his ears. Even Boyd cringed, though he drove through the agony with fierce determination. A trail of blood dribbled from one of his ears as he roared, driving the zamboni into the creature’s body.

The Mahaha lurched forwards over Stiles as it began to disintegrate. First its hair began to crumble. Then its extremities - fingers, nose, ears - and finally its limbs and torso shuddered and broke into chunks, showering down across the ice and Stiles’ limp, lifeless body. 

Erica abandoned Plisetsky in the bleachers and and vaulted onto the ice as the sound died away. Her sneakers had little traction, but the ruined ice was far easier to navigate than it had been an hour ago. She made it to Stiles’ side and spared only the briefest of moments to press her ear against his chest and confirm that his heart was still beating. Then, she grabbed the kid by the arm and lifted in him up into a fireman’s carry without even breaking a sweat. 

God, she loved being a werewolf. 

Erica hauled Stiles to the edge of the rink and dumped him as gently as possible over the wall and onto the floor at Plisetsky’s feet.

Whatever the Mahaha had done to him didn’t seem to be life-threatening, but that didn’t mean it was good - she sniffed deeply but didn’t smell much blood. There was fear, terror, and the cold smell of wet earth under a crust of ice - it reminded her of the scent clinging to the corpse they’d found that morning, and she shivered with revulsion. 

They would need to take him to Deaton and make sure the monster hadn’t damaged something internally.

“Everything okay?” she heard Derek say softly out on the ice. Erica looked up and met his eye - he was watching her stand over Stiles, a surprisingly tender expression on his face.

Huh.

“Yeah,” she said, loud enough that his super senses would pick it up over the fire alarm. “He needs a check-up, but he smells fine.”

Derek nodded tensely, then kicked a chunk of icy blue flesh into the path of the zamboni.

When Erica turned back to the bleachers Yuri Plisetsky was staring at her with eyes as round as saucers. 

“What _are_ you?” he whispered. The red welt at his temple was starting to swell and bruise, making him look vulnerable and young.

Well - so much for secrecy. “Werewolf,” she admitted with a shrug. “We’re real. Surprise!”

Out on the ice, Boyd’s zamboni began to crunch and grind. He’d thrown the thing in reverse and had one arm thrown over the driver’s seat, meticulously grinding over the remnants of the Mahaha. Lydia reached the wall as he worked, throwing her legs over the wall and perching there for a moment as she unlaced her skates.

“Smart,” she grunted, voice hoarse and ragged.

“Smart?” Erica repeated, her ears still ringing. 

“Yes, smart. The zamboni ‘washes’ ice before redistributing it. It’ll mix the creature’s remains with fresh water and mist it out over the surface of the rink.”

“Ew,” said Erica.

“Running water,” Lydia said sweetly.

She groaned. “Nobody tell Stiles he was actually right, please. ”

“He was almost right, not actually right.” Lydia threw one leg over the wall and heaved herself over. Her socks had pink roses on them. “Remember the thing with the ashes? You have to scatter corpses into running water. That’s… well. That’s basically what they’re doing here.”

“Corpses?” Yuri asked faintly. Lydia glanced over at him and sighed, put-upon.

“Monster corpses don’t count,” she said. 

Boyd’s zamboni finished mowing its second six-foot wide swath through the scattered monster shards. He silently turned the machine and started back again, catching up stray pieces of dust and debris.

At the front of the rink there was a crash and a shattering sound as the doors burst inwards. “GUYS, LOOK OUT, THERE’S-- …. there’s…. oh, holy _shit_ ,” said Scott.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Lydia announced, voice dripping with disdain. “The late, the great - Scott McCall.”

Erica rolled her eyes hard enough to strain something and gave Scott the finger.

Isaac and Allison hurried in behind Scott, both looking around with wide eyes. Isaac immediately moved towards Derek, his sneakers slipping and sliding on the dirty ice. Fortunately, the sheer amount of debris on the surface had improved the overall friction, so he reached their alpha without falling face-first onto a rink covered in broken glass.

Derek was doing what he did best -- looming. The tension in his shoulders only vanished when the last of the monster’s remains did, their strange blue hue washed out and marbled into the surface of the rink. He even let Isaac sling an arm around his shoulders and helm him off the ice, though Erica suspected that was more for Isaac’s benefit than his own. Isaac always liked being useful.

Boyd drew the zamboni to a stop, dusted his hands off against his jeans, then leapt from the machine to the bleachers. Erica stepped into his space the moment he was at her level and kissed him, deep and wet enough that Plisetsky made a faintly disgusted sound behind her.

By the time Yuuri Katsuki and Victor Nikiforov joined them they could all hear sirens ringing outside. Derek swore, kneeling down next to Stiles’ crumpled form and scooping him up in one fell swoop, damsel-in-distress style. 

“Is he okay?” Victor asked, looking at Stiles’ still form with concern written all over his features.

“Probably,” Lydia grunted. “He offered himself up as Mahaha-bait, Derek. Deaton will need to see him.”

Derek nodded, expression grim. “Boyd, exits?” 

“You guys can take the service exit. I think I should stay - they’re gonna figure out an employee was involved pretty quick with the Zamboni out on the ice. Only three of us have keys.”

Lydia swore under her breath. “Is that a good idea?”

“It is what it is,” Boyd said, shrugging. 

“Is it safe for you to --” Yuuri started to ask, then bit his lip and trailed away awkwardly. “I mean. Maybe one of us should stay with you. So you aren’t alone.”

Boyd shot him a surprisingly warm look. “Stiles’ dad usually responds to the weird calls - he likes to do damage control and keep our names out of anything if it can be helped. He’s one of the good ones..”

“What are you going to tell the police?” Yuri asked. Erica wondered if the kid was going into shock - he looked pretty out of it. It was strange to think that they were the same age - he’d been all over the world and bumped elbows with the elite, but he’d never seen a man die or burn the corpse of a witch.

 _‘What a baby,’_ she thought drily.

Allison frowned at Yuri. “It’ll be okay. We have a few standard explanations for this kind of thing. We could say -- gas leak?”

“We used that one on the witches,” Isaac reminded her. “Twice.”

“Oh, yeah. Maybe localized seismic activity? That would explain the ruined rink.”

“That’s … pretty localized,” Scott said, frowning.

“It’s impossible to prove,” Lydia said, thoughtfully. “But also impossible to disprove. Not a bad cover story.”. 

“You guys do this a lot?” Victor asked, shivering at Yuuri’s side.

Allison lifted a hand and tilted it thoughtfully from side to side. “Eh. It’s not always ice demons, but we do see a lot of supernatural trouble.”

“Supernatural…” Katsuki repeated, his face pale.

“One thing’s for sure,” Boyd interrupted firmly. “The skaters have got to go. They’re celebrities - if one of them is caught here this disaster will be all over the national news. You guys get going, I’ll handle the police.”

Allison frowned. “Are you sure it's dead?” she asked, frowning.

“I dumped mountain ash into the water tank before I took her for a spin,” Boyd told her, shrugging. Erica leaned in for another kiss - god damn, the man was _so freaking sexy_ when he curbstomped villainous ice-demons.

“My fucking brilliant boyfriend,” she sighed, feeling smug.

“Are we going, or are we going?” Derek snapped.

“We’re going,” Victor agreed. He grabbed his gym bag along with Yuuri and Yuri’s, then shooed his friends after Derek and the others. Erica gave Boyd one last lingering kiss, then left him on his own with the police.

•○•

“That’s quite a lump you have there _Vernon_ ,” observed Sheriff Stilinski, loudly, and for the benefit of his fellow officers. Boyd had been discovered face-down on the ice, evidently having fallen from the zamboni while prepping the rink for the day’s visitors. He was feigning a head wound, though the sheriff couldn’t see any signs that he’d actually participated in what had obviously been a supernatural brawl.

The rink itself had been obliterated. The ice was ruined, several bleachers had been bodily ripped out of the concrete floor and thrown around the room, and every single lightbulb and skylight in the place had exploded. The broken glass alone would keep the place shut down for weeks while it was all cleared away and the skating surface was defrosted, scrubbed down, and re-created. 

Sheriff Stilinski had a pretty good eye for supernatural damages, and an awful lot of this damage had ‘werewolf’ written all over it. Jesus - why couldn’t they just duke it out in the woods? Why did it always happen in public places? The paperwork was absolutely unbearable.

“Parrish,” he called over one shoulder. “Get the interns to start cataloging this property damage.”

“You got it, boss. What do we think happened here?”

“Maybe some kind of tremor,” the sheriff dutifully repeated the cover story, glaring at Boyd as he did so. “Vernon can’t really remember. He _bumped his head_.”

Boyd scowled. 

“Do we need an ambulance?” Parrish asked, eying Boyd with suspicion. “Fire department’s on its way, but engine number three is stuck in the slush off of Elm street.” 

“I’m fine, really,” Boyd said. “I just fell off the zamboni. It happens all the time.”

“Take a statement,” the sheriff said, waving Boyd and Parrish off towards the main entrance. “Then let him be - he’s not going to be working any concession stands today.”

He waited until they were a good twenty feet away before scraping his foot along the surface of the ice. There, burned into the surface of the rink, was the faintest outline of a pale blue figure, mouth stretched open in a silent, motionless scream.

•○•

In typical fashion, the gang wound up back at the Stilinski residence, their out-of-town guests in tow. The living room was covered in the detritus of a been late-night research session; there were strange-looking books and empty cans of Mountain Dew scattered everywhere. To Yuuri’s untrained eyes the books and wands looked like props from a Harry Potter film.

Yuri was currently flipping through a leather-bound tome as thick as his fist with with a horrified expression on his face. He was wearing Erica’s leopard-print tracker hat; she’d dropped it onto his head affectionately when they’d walked out of the clinic. Yuuri and Victor were sitting next to him, Victor’s head in Yuuri’s lap and his feet draped over Yuri’s knees. Allison, Lydia, Isaac, and Scott took the other couch, while Stiles and Derek were curled up together in an armchair that was absolutely not big enough for two people. There was an an odd amount of sniffing and snuggling going on over there.

Yuuri elected to ignore it. Excessive sniffing didn’t barely made the top ten on his list of “weird shit that happened in the last 24 hours”.

They’d visited a doctor after the incident at the rink -- well, everyone called him a doctor, but Yuuri had his doubts considering that most of his patients appeared to be dogs. “Doctor” Deaton patched up Yuri’s head, checked on Stiles’ “magical spark”, and gave Yuuri two neat stitches on the back of one arm where a chunk of falling glass had cut particularly deep. Victor’s arm wound proved to be shallow and needed nothing more than a dab of antiseptic and a nice wide bandaid. 

The werewolves were all back at 100%, their wounds having closed up before the group even reached the clinic. Their super powers apparently included super healing, along with a plethora of other supersenses that made Yuuri wish he’d had a chance to shower after the battle. 

He didn’t even want to imagine what he smelled like to werewolf noses.

“Wait,” Yuri said, snapping the book shut emphatically. “Does this mean we’ve been secretly competing against supernatural monsters on the ice?!” 

“Watch who you’re calling a monster,” Isaac said, rolling his eyes.

“I’m being serious! Which of our competitors are secretly werewolves?” Yuri demanded, voice pitching upwards. 

Yuuri was sympathetic. The full implications of the werewolves-are-real bombshell were still percolating through his own brain, and Yuri had taken a hit to the head to boot. Still, Yuuri had to hide a smile behind one hand. Of course Yuri’s mind went straight to _competitions_. 

“Most of us don’t compete in professional sports,” Derek told him, rolling his eyes. “Believe it or not, we try to keep the supernatural world on the down-low.”

“I hate to tell you, ” Yuri snapped back. “You’re doing a pretty shitty job with that.”

Derek flashed a toothy smirk over the top of Stiles’ head. “I don’t know. _You_ were pretty fucking surprised.”

“The secrecy is one thing, getting away with it is another,” Scott interrupted loudly, ignoring the dirty look Derek shot him. “It’s genuinely hard not to use your super-abilities when you get all caught up in a game or a match or whatever. It’s also not fair to compete against humans when you have more juice in the tank, so to speak.”

“No kidding,” Yuri muttered, scowling at them.

“Gee, thanks Scott,” Stiles muttered, words muffled by an enormous knit throw. He was wrapped up in every spare blanket they’d been able to scrounge up, but the layers didn’t seem to be helping his shivers much. Derek had practically pulled him into his lap after Stiles demanded that he share his “werewolfy furnace bod”.

“Sorry, bro,” Scott said. “It’s true, though. It’s cheating, and cheating is like, zero fun for anyone involved.”

Victor nodded muzzily, blinking heavily at Scott. He’d dropped his head in Yuuri’s lap and was already half-asleep. “He’s right,” he muttered. “There’s no joy in competition if the competition isn’t fair.”

“Look on the bright side,” Allison said, smiling at him. “If werewolves are skating in your competitions, you’re beating them - supernatural powers and all.”

That idea mollified Yuri. Yuuri smothered a laugh at the smug expression that came over his face.

“There should be a werewolf-only league,” Erica mused. “We could have more complicated jumps. Quintuple spins and stuff.”

Yuri made an affronted noise. “That’s impossible.”

“Is it?” Erica asked sweetly, nudging his knee with her socked toe. “I mean, I couldn't do it, obviously. But I bet someone could.”

“The main reason werewolves don’t compete professionally is that there are groups of fanatical humans who know they exist and have dedicated themselves to killing off every last werewolf on Earth,” Allison said, rolling onto her side and looking thoughtfully at Yuri. “What good is a gold medal in competition if you out yourself as a supernatural creature and get murdered for it?”

“Which, by the way, is why you really shouldn’t mention that you hang out with werewolves on Instagram,” Lydia added, scrolling through what must be Yuri’s insta feed on her phone. “Although this photo of blood on the ice is pretty artistic.”

The sound of a key turning in the lock made every werewolf in the room perk up and turn to the door. 

“Sheriff,” Derek told them, shoving Stiles out of his lap like a hot potato. “And Boyd.”

Stiles flailed and slumped down to the floor, landing on his tailbone and swearing. He shoved himself away from the recliner and leaned up against the fireplace instead, scowling up at Derek. 

“Sheriff, Boyd, and… PIZZA!” Scott exclaimed, leaping up and padding over to the door.

Boyd entered first, his arms full of pizza boxes. Yuuri was relieved to see that he hadn’t been arrested; he wasn’t sure if Boyd was a werewolf or not, but the man had been kind to him. He didn’t deserve to be thrown in jail for something that wasn’t his fault. 

The Sheriff trailed behind him, holding two liters of Pepsi and bottle of ibuprofen. Yuuri felt himself flush with embarrassment - what was it about police officers that always made him feel like he’d done something wrong? “Good evening, Sheriff Stilinski.”

“Hey kid,” the Sheriff said, raising an eyebrow. “I thought I told you three to stay out of trouble.”

Yuuri flushed and started to stammer out a response, but the sheriff held up a hand.

“Kidding,” he said, gently. “When you rolled in, we weren’t sure if you were the monsters, if you’d brought the monsters, or if all of this was sheer coincidence.”

“It was a coincidence!” Yuri exclaimed, affronted. “We’re a couple of normal guys - you people are the ones with the insanely dangerous supernatural town!”

“That’s fair,” Scott agreed, shoving half a slice of pepperoni pizza into his mouth.

“Maybe the Mahaha was a figure skating fan,” Erica suggested, laughing as she balanced her plate of pizza on one knee. “He _did_ go for Katsuki first.”

Yuuri groaned. “Don’t say that,” he muttered, eying the pizza longingly. “I’ll never sleep again.”

Victor roused himself for long enough to fetch pizza, and much to Yuuri’s surprise a plate piled high with three slices found its way into his hand.

“What about my diet?” he asked Victor, arching an eyebrow.

“I’ve declared the day a cheat day,” Victor decided. “Fighting evil monsters burns calories, obviously.”

“I’m going to be so sore tomorrow,” Stiles whined. “I hate ice skating.”

Once the pizza was doled out, the Sheriff followed up with the ibuprofen, handing it out to the injured parties like candy. Then he dropped into the recliner that had, until recently, been occupied by Derek and Stiles. 

They were now sitting side by side on the carpeted floor in a completely platonic manner, no part of their bodies touching. Stiles was no longer shivering, and that made Yuuri wonder if his coldness had just been a pretext to get closer to Derek.

“Alright kids,” the Sheriff said, reaching into his final shopping bag and pulling out a six pack of beer. He offered a can to Derek - who refused quickly - and then to Yuuri and Victor, who were both too tired to drink. 

Shrugging, he cracked the pull-tab and took a quick swig. “Now. Tell me what _really_ happened.”

“You won’t believe us,” Yuri muttered, folding his arms across his chest. 

Sheriff Stilinski took a long sip of his beer and raised one eyebrow, smirking at the teen. “Oh yeah?” he asked, smugly. “Try me.”

“Well,” Yuuri started, shrugging helplessly. “It all started when an ice-demon tried to run us off the road.”

•○•

_~fin~_

•○•


End file.
